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THE | 


FOOTPRINTS or tue CREATOR: 


OR, 


THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS. 





By HUGH MILLE 






JUN 9 7914 


Dy > 
EOI ney , eg ne 
“ When I asked him how this ex th could have been repeopled if ever tthad= - 


one the same fate it was threatened with by the comet of 1680, he answered, — ‘ that 
8 


required the power of a Creator.’ — Conduits “Conversation with Sir lsaae 
Newton, 


TWENTY THIRD THOUSAND, 


Cith a {Memoir of the Author 


By LOUIS AGASSIZ. 


NEW YORK 
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
1892 


» 


ARGYLE PRESS, 
DRINTING AND BOOKBINDING, 
265 & 267 CHERRY ST... N. 


TO 


SIR PHILIP DE MALPAS GREY EGERTON, 
BART., M. P., F.R.8, & G.S. 


To you, Sir, as our highest British authority on fossil fishes 
l take the liberty of dedicating this little volume. In tracing 
the history of Creation, as illustrated in that ichthyic division 
of the vertebrata which is at once the most ancient and the 
most extensively preserved, I have introduced a considerable 
amount of fact and observation, for the general integrity of 
which my appeal must lie, not to the writings of my friends 
the geologists, but to the strangely significant record in- 
scribed in the rocks, which it is their highest merit justly to 
interpret and faithfully to transcribe. The ingenious and 
popular author whose views on Creation I attempt contro- 
verting, virtually carries his appeal from science to the want 
of it. I would fain adopt an opposite course: And my use, 
on this occasion, of your name, may serve to evince the de- 
sire which I entertain that the collation of my transcripts of 


hitherto uncopied portions of the geologic history with the 


1V DEDICATION. 


history itself, should be in the hands of men qualified, by 
original vigor of faculty and the patient research of years, 
either to detect the erroneous or to certify the true. Fur. 
ther, I feel peculiar pleasure in availing myself of the op- 
portunity furnished me, by the publication of this little work, 
of giving expression to my sincere respect for one who, oc- 
supying a high place in society, and deriving his descent 
from names illustrious in history, has wisely taken up the 
true position of birth and rank in an enlightened country and 
age ; and who, in asserting, by his modest, persevering la- 
bors, his proper standing in the scientific world, has rendered 
himself first among his countrymen in an interesting depart- 
ment of Natural Science, to which there is no aristocratic o1 
“royal road.” 
I have the honor to be, Sir, 
With admiration and respect, 


Your obedient humble servant, 


HUGH MILLER. 


TO THE READER. 


T'aere are chapters in this little volume vhich 
will, I am afraid, be deemed too prolix by the general 
reader, and which yet the geologist would like less 
were there any portion of them away. They refer 
chiefly to organisms not hitherto figured nor described, 
and must owe their modicum of value to that very 
minuteness of detail which, by critics of the merely 
literary type, unacquainted with fossils, and not greatly 
interested in them, may be regarded as a formidable 
defect, suited to overlay the general subject of the 
work. Perhaps the best mode of compromising the 
matter may be to intimate, as if by beacon, at the 
outset, the more repulsive chapters; somewhat in the 


way that the servants of the Humane Society indi- 


vi TO THE READER. 


cate to the skater who frequents in winter the lakes 
in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, those parts of the 
ice on which he might be in danger of losing him- 
self. I would recommend, then, readers not particu- 
larly paleontological, to pass but lightly over the 
whole of my fourth and fifth chapters, with the latter 
half of the third, marking, however, as they skim the 
pages, the conclusions at which I arrive regarding the 
bulk and organization of the extraordinary animal 
described, and the data on which these are founded. 
My book, like an Irish landseape dotted with green 
bogs, has its portions on which it may be perilous for 
the unpractised surveyor to make any considerable 
stand, but across which he may sately take his sights 
and lay down his angles. 

It will, I trust, be found, that in dealing with errors 
which, in at least their primary bearing, affect ques- 
tions of science, I have not offended against the cour- 
tesies of scientific controversy. True, they are errors 
which also involve moral consequences. ‘There is a 
species of superstition which inclines 1ren to take on 
trust whatever assumes the name of science; and 
which seems to be a reaction on the old superstition, 


that had faith in witches, but none in Sir Isaac New- 


TO THE REA.ER. vu 


ton, and believed in ghosts, but failed to credit the 
Gregorian calendar. And, owing mainly to the wide 
diffusion of this credulous spirit of the modern type, 
as little disposed to examine what it receives as its 
ancient unreasoning predecessor, the development 
doctrines are doing much harm on both sides of the 
Atlantic, especially among intelligent mechanics, and 
a class of young men engaged in the subordinate de- 
partments of trade and the law. And the harm, thus 
considerable in amount, must be necessarily more than 
merely considerable in degree. For it invariably hap- 
pens, that when persons in these walks become ma- 
terialists, they become also turbulent subjects and bad 
men. ‘That belief in the existence after death, which 
forms the distinguishing instinct of humanity, is too 
essential a part of man’s moral constitution not to be 
missed when away ; and so, when once fairly eradi- 
cated, the life and conduct rarely fail to betray its 
absence. But I have not, from any consideration of 
the mischief thus effected, written as if arguments 
like cannon-balls, could be rendered more formidable 
than in the cool state by being made red-hot. I have 
not even felt, in discussing the question, as if I had 


a man before me as an opponent; for though mj 
B 


vill TO THE READER. 


work contains numerous references to the author of 
the “ Vestiges,” I have invariably thought on these 
cecasions, not of the anonymous writer of the vol- 
ume, of whom I know nothing, but simply of an in- 
genious, well-written book, unfortunate in its facts, 
and not always very happy in its reasonings. Fur- 
ther, I do not think that paleontological fact, in its 
bearing on the points at issue, is of such a doubtful 
complexion as to leave the geologist, however much 
from moral considerations in earnest in the matter. 
any very serious excuse for losing his temper. 

In my reference to the three great divisions of the 
geologic scale, I designate as Paleozoic all the fossil- 
iferous rocks, from the first appearance of organic ex 
istence down to the close of the Permian system ; all 
as Secondary, from the close of the Permian system 
down to the close of the Cretaceous deposits ; and all — 
as Tertiary, from the close of the Cretaceous deposits 
down to the introduction of man. The wood-cuts 
of the volume, of which at least nine tenths of the 
whole represent objects never figured before, were 
drawn and cut by Mr. John Adams of Edinburgh, 
‘8, Heriot Place,) with a degree of care and skill 


which has lett me no reason to regret my distance 


T0 THE READER ix 


from the London artists and engravers. So far at 
-east as the objects could be adequately represented 
on wood, and in the limited space at Mr. Adams’ 
command, their truth is such that I ean safely recom- 
mend them to the paleontologist. In the accompa- 
nying descriptions, and in my statements of geologic 
fact in general, it will, I hope, be seen that I have 
not exaggerated the peculiar features on which I have 
founded, nor rendered truth partial in order to make 
1t serve a purpose. Where I have reasoned and in- 
ferred, the reader will of course be able to judge for 
himself whether the argument be sound or the deduc- 
tion just ; and to weigh, where I have merely specu- 
lated, the probability of the speculation ; but as, in 
at least some of my statements of fact, he might lie 
more at my mercy, I have striven in every instance 
to make these adequately representative of the ac- 
tualities to which they refer. And so, if it be ulti- 
mately found that on some occasions I have misled 
others, it will, I hope, be also seen to be only in cases 
in which I have been mistaken myself. The first or 
popular title of my work, “Foot-prints of the Cre- 
ator,’ I owe to Dr. Hetherington, the well-known 


historian of the Church of Scotland. My other va- 


xX TO THE READER. 


nous obligations to my friends, literary and scientific, 
the reader will find acknowledged in the hody of the 
volume, as the occasion occurs of availing myself of 
either the information communicated, or the organ- 


ism, recent o1 extinct, lent me or given 


HUGH MILLER, 
AUTHOR OF 


“QLD RED SANDSTONE” AND “FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR. 





Tux geological works of Hugh Miller have excited the greatest 
interest, not only among scientific men, but also among general read- 
ers. There is in them a freshness of conception, a power of argu- 
mentation, a depth of thought, a purity of feelings, rarely met with 
in works of that character, which are well calculated to call forth 
sympathy, and to increase the popularity of a science which has al- 
ready done so much to expand our views of the Plan of Creation 
The scientific illustrations published by Mr. Miller are most happily 
combined with considerations of a higher order, rendering both 
equally acceptable to the thinking reader. But what is in a great 
degree peculiar to our author, is the successful combination of Chris- 
tian doctrines with pure scientific truths. On that account, his 
works deserve peculiar attention His generalizations have nothing 
of the vagueness which too often characterize the writings of those 
authors who have attempted to make the results of science subservi- 
ent to the cause of religion. Struck with the beauty of Mr. Miller's 
works, it has for some time past been my wish to see them more exten- 
sively circulated in this country; and I have obtained leave from the 
author to publish an American edition of his ‘‘ Footprints of the 
Creator,” for which he has most liberally furnished the p»blishers 
with the admirable wood-cuts of the original. 

While preparing some additional chapters, and various notes illus- 
trative of certain points alluded to incidentally in this work, it was 
leemed advisable to preface it with a short biographical notice of 

B* 


xii HUGH MILLER. 


the author. I had already sketched such a paper, when I became 
acquainted with a full memoir of this remarkable man, containing 
most interesting details of his earlier life, written by that eminent 
historian of the ‘‘ Martyrs of Science,” the great natural philosopher 
of Scotland. It has occurred to me that, owing to the frequent ref- 
erences which I could not avoid to my own researches, I had better 
substitute this ample Biography for my short sketch, with such alter- 
ations and additions as the connection in which it is brought here 
would require. I therefore proceed to introduce our author with Sir 
David Brewster’s own words : — 

Of all the studies which relate to the material universe, there 
is none, perhaps, which appeals so powerfully to our senses, or 
which comes into such close and immediate contact with our wants 
and enjoyments, as that of Geology. In our hourly walks, whether 
on business or for pleasure, we tread with heedless step upon the ap- 
parently uninteresting objects which it embraces: but could we 
rightly interrogate the rounded pebble at our feet, it would read us 
an exciting chapter on the history of primeval times, and would tell 
us of the convulsions by which it was wrenched from its parent rock, 
and of the floods by which it was abraded and transported to its 
present humble locality. In our visit to the picturesque and the . 
sublime in nature, we are brought into closer proximity to the more 
interesting phenomena of geology. In the precipices which protect 
our rock-girt shores, which flank our mountain glens, or which va- 
riegate our lowland valleys, and in the shapeless fragments at their 
base, which the lichen colors, and round which the ivy twines, we 
see the remnants of uplifted and shattered beds, which once re- 
posed in peace at the bottom of the ocean. Nor does the rounded 
boulder, which would have defied the lapidary’s wheel of the Giant 
Age, give forth a less oracular response from its grave of clay, or 
from its lair of sand. Floated by ice from some Alpine summit, or 
hurried along in torrents of mud, and floods of water, it may have 
traversed a quarter of the globe, amid the crash of falling for- 
ests, and the death shrieks of the noble animals which they sheltered 
The mountain range, too, with its catacombs below, along which the 
earthquake transmits its terrific sounds, reminds us of the mighty 
power by which it was upheaved ;— while the lofty peak, with its 
cap of ice, or its nostrils of fire, places in our view the tremendous 
agencies which have beer at work beneath us. . 

But it is not merely amid the powers of external nature t!.. une 
once hidden things of the Earth are presented to our view. Our 


° 


HUGH MILLER. xi 


temples and our palaces are formed from the rocks of a primeval age ; 
bearing the very ripple-marks of a Pre-Adamite ocean, — grooved by 
the passage of the once moving boulder, and embosoming the relics 
of ancient life, and the plants by which it was sustained. Our 
dwellings, too, are ornamented with the variegated limestones, — the 
indurated tombs of molluscous life, and our apartments heated 
with the carbon of primeval forests, and lighted with the gaseous 
element which it confines. ‘The obelisk of granite, and the colossal 
tronze which transmit to future ages the deeds of the hero and the 
sage, are equally the production of the Earth’s prolific womb; and 
from the green bed of the ocean has been raised the pure and spot- 
less marble, to mould the divine lineaments of beauty, and perpetu- 
ate the expressions of intellectual power. From a remoter age, and 
a still greater depth, the primary and secondary rocks have yielded a 
rich tribute to the chaplet of rank, and to the processes of art. 

Exhibiting, as it peculiarly does, almost all those objects of inter- 
est and research, Scotland has been diligently studied both by na- 
tive and foreign observers; and she has sent into the geological field 
a distinguished group of inquirers, who have performed a noble feat 
in exploring the general structure of the Earth, in decyphering its 
ancient monuments, and in unlocking those storehouses of mineral] 
wealth, from which civilized man derives the elements of that gigan- 
tic power which his otherwise feeble arm wields over nature. 

The occurrence of shells on the highest mountains, and the re- 
mains of plants and animals, which the most superficial observer 
could not fail to notice, in the rocks around him, have for centuries 
commanded the attention and exercised the ingenuity of every stu- 
dent cf nature. But though sparks of geological truth were from 
time to time elicited by speculative minds, it was not till the end of 
the last century that its great lights broke forth, and that it took the 
form and character of one of the noblest of the sciences. Without 
undervaluing the labors of Werner, and other illustrious foreigners, 
or those of our southern countrymen, Mitchell and Smith, at the 
close of the last century, we may characterize the commencement of 
the present as the brightest period of geological discovery, and place 
its most active locality in the northern metropolis of our island. It 
was doubtless from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as a centre, that 
a great geological impulse was propagated southward, and it was by 
the collision of the Wernerian and Huttonian views, the antagonist 
theories of water and of fire, that men of intellectual power were 
summoned from other studies; and that grand truths, which fanat 


hiv HUGH MILLER. 


ism and intolerance had hitherto abjured, rose triumphant over the 
ignorance and bigotry of the age. The Geological Society of London, 
which doubtless sprung from the excitement in the Scottish metropo- 
lis, entered on the new field of research with a faltering step. The 
prejudices of the English mind had been marshalled with illiberal 
violenee against the Huttonian doctrines. Infidelity and Atheism 
were charged against their supporters; and had there been a Protes- 
tant Inquisition in England at that period of general political excite- 
ment, the geologists of the north would have beenimmured in its 
deepest dungeons. 

Truth, however, marched apace; and though her simple but ma- 
jestic procession be often solemn and slow, and her votaries few and 
Jejected, yet on this, as on every occasion, she triumphed over the 
most inveterate prepossessions, and finally took up her abode in those 
very halls and institutions where she had been persecuted and re- 
viled. When their science had been thus acquitted of the charge of 
impiety and irreligion, the members of the Geological Society left 
their humble and timid position of being the collectors only of the 
materials of future generalizations, and became at once the most su- 
cessful observers of geological phenomena, and the boldest asserters 
of geological truth. 

In this field of research, in which the physical, as well as the in 
tellectual, frame of the philosopher is made tributary to science, two 
of our countrymen — Sir Roderick Murchison and Sir Charles Lyell 
— have been among our most active laborers. From the study of 
their native glens, these distinguished travellers, like the Humboldts 
and the Von Buchs of the continent, have passed into foreign lands, 
exploring the north and the south of Europe, and extending their 
labors to the eastern ranges of the Ural and the Timan, and to the 
Apallachians and the Alleghanies in the far west. But while our 
two countrymen were interrogating the strata of other lands, many 
able and active laborers had been at work in their own. 

Among the eminent students of the structure of the earth, Mr. 
Hugh Miller holds a lofty place, not merely from the discovery of 
new and undescribed organisms in the Old Red Sandstone, but from 
the accuracy and beauty of his descriptions, the purity and elegance 
of his composition, and the high tone of philosophy and religion 
which distinguishes all his writings. Mr. Miller is one of the few 
individuals in the history of Scottish science who have raised 
themselyes above the labors of an humble profession, by the force 
of their genius and the excellence of their character, to a compara. 


HUGH MILLER. XV 


tively high place in the social scale. Mr. Telford, like Mr. Miller, 
followed the profession of a stone-mason, before his industry and 
self-tuition qualified him for the higher functions of an architect 
and an engineer. And Mr. Watt and Mr. Rennie rose to wealty 
and fame without the aid of a university education. But, distin- 
guished as these individuals were, none of them possessed those 
qualities of mind which Mr. Miller has exhibited in his writings ; 
and, with the exception of Burns, the uneducated genius which haw 
done honor to Scotland during the last century, has never displayed 
that mental refinement, and classical taste, and intellectual energy, 
which mark all the writings of our author. We wish that we 
could have gratified our readers with an authentic and even detailed 
narrative of the previous history of so remarkable a writer, and of 
the steps by which his knowledge was acquired, and the difficulties 
which he encountered in its pursuit; but though this is not, to any 
great extent, in our power, we shall at least be able, chiefly frou: 
Mr. Miller’s own writings, to follow him throughout his geologico: 
eareer. 

Mr. Miller was born at Cromarty, of humble but respectable pa- 
rents, whose history would have possessed no inconsiderable interest, 
even if it had not derived one of a higher kind from the genius aud 
fortunes of their child. By the paternal side he was descended 
from a race of sea-faring people, whose family burying-ground, if 
we judge from the past, seems to be the sea. Under its green waves 
his father sleeps: his grandfather, his two granduncles, one of whoin 
sailed round the world with Anson, lie also there; and the sanie 
extensive cemetery contains the relics of several of his more distant 
relatives. His father was but an infant of scarcely a year old, at 
the death of our author’s grandfather, and had to commence life as @ 
poor ship-boy; but such was the energy of his mind, that, when 
little turned of thirty, he had become the master and owner of 2, 
fine large sloop, and had built himself a good house, which entitled 
his son to the franchise on the passing of the Reform Bill. Having 
unfortunately lost his sloop in a storm, he had to begin the world 
anew, and he soon became master and owner of another, and would 
have thriven, had he lived; but the hereditary fate was too strung 
for him, and when our author was a little boy of five summers, his 
father’s fine new sloop foundered at sea in a terrible tempest, and 
he and his crew were never more heard of. Mr. Miller had two 
sisters younger than himself, both of whom died ere they attamed 


XV HUGH MILLER. 


to womanhood. His mother experienced the usual difficulties 
which a widow has to encounter in the decent education of her 
family ; but she struggled honestly and successfully, and ultimately 
found her reward in the character and fame of her son. It is from 
this excellent woman that Mr. Miller has inherited those sentiments 
and feelings which have given energy to his talents as the defender 
of revealed truth, and the champion of the Church of his fathers. 
She was the great granddaughter of a venerable man, still well 
known to tradition in the north of Scotland as Donald Roy of Nigg, 
— a sort of northern Peden, who is described in the history of our 
Church as the single individual who, at the age of eighty, when the 
presbytery of the district had assembled in the empty church for 
the purpose of inducting an obnoxious presentee, had the courage 
to protest against the intrusion, and to declare ‘‘ that the blood of 
the people of Nigg would be required at their hands, if they settled 
a man ¢o the walls of that church.” Tradition has represented him 
as a seer of visions, and a prophesier of prophecies; but whatever 
credit may be given to stories of this kind, which have been told 
also of Knox, Welsh, and Rutherford, this ancient champion of 
Non-Intrusion was aman of genuine piety, and the savor of his 
ennobling beliefs and his strict morals has survived in his family 
for generations. If the child of such parents did not receive the best 
education which his native town could afford, it was not their fault, 
nor that of his teacher. The fetters of a gymnasium are not easily 
worn by the adventurous youth who has sought and found his pleas- 
ures among the hills and on the waters. They chafe the young and 
active limb that has grown vigorous under the blue sky, and never 
known repose but at midnight. The young philosopher of Cromarty 
was a member of this restless community ; and he had been the hero 
of adventures and accidents among rocks and woods, which are still 
remembered in his native town. The parish school was therefore 
not the scene of his enjoyments; and while he was a truant, and, 
with reverence be it spoken, a dunce, while under its jurisdiction, 
he was busy in the fields and on the sea-shore in collecting those 
stores of knowledge which he was born to dispense among his fellow- 
men. He escaped, however, from school, with the knowledge of 
reading, writing, and a little arithmetic, and with the credit of unit- 
ing a great memory with a little scholarship. Unlike his illustrious 
predecessor, Cuvier, he had studied Natural History in the fields and 
among the mountains ere he had sought for it in books; while the 


HUGH MILLER. XxV1 


French philosopher had become a learned naturalist before he had 
even looked upon the world of Nature. This singular contrast it 
8 not difficult to explain. With a sickly constitution and a delicate 
frame, the youthful Cuvier wanted that physical activity which the 
observation of Nature demands. Our Scottish geologist, on the con- 
trary, in vigorous health, and with an iron frame, rushed to the 
rocks and the sea-shore in search of the instruction which was not 
provided for him at school, and which he could find no books t) 
supply. 

After receiving this measure of education, Mr. Miller set out in 
February, 1821, with a heavy heart, as he himself confesses, ‘ to 
make his first acquaintance with a life of labor and restraint :”” — 


‘‘T was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the pretty 
intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and wo- 
ful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has instanced in his 
‘Twa Dogs’ as one of the most disagreeable of all employments — to 
work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few 
gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by 
had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among 
rocks and woods, —a reader of curious books, when I could get them, —a 
gleaner of old traditionary stories, —and now I was going to exchange 
all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of life in which 
men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day 
that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in which I wrought lay on 
the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or frith, rather, (the Bay of 
Cromarty,) with a little, clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir wood 
on the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the dis- 
trict, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, and which rose 
over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet.””— Old Rea 
Sandstone, p. 4. 


After removing the loose fragments below, picks and wedges ang 
levers were applied in vain by our author and his brother workmen 
to tear up and remove the huge strata beneath. Blasting by gun- 
powder became necessary. A mass of the diluvial clay came tumbling 
down, ‘‘ bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had 
erept into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter.” While 
admiring the pretty cock goldfinch, and the light-blue and grayish- 
yellow woodpecker, and moralizing on their fate, the workmen were 
ordered to lay aside their tools, and thus ended the first day’s labor 
of our young geologist. The sun was then sinking behind the thick 
fir wood behind him, and the long dark shadows of the trees stretch- 


AVI HUGH MILLER. 


ing to the shore. Notwithstanding his blistered hands, and the 
fatigue which blistered them, he found himself next morning as light 
of heart as his fellow-laborers, and able to enjoy the magnificent 
scenery around him, which he thus so beautifully describes : — 


“There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime lay white 
on the grass as we passed onwards through the fields; but the sun rose in 
a clear atmosphere, and the day mellowed as it advanced into one of those 
delightful days of early spring which give so pleasing an earnest of what- 
ever is mild and genial in the better half of the year. All the workmen 
rested at midday, and I went to enjoy my half hour alone on a mossy 
knoll in the neighboring wood, which commands through the trees a wide 
prospect of the bay and the opposite shore. There was not a wrinkle on 
the water, nor a cloud in the sky; and the branches were as moveless in 
the calm as if they had been traced on canvas. From a wooded promon- 
tory that stretched half way across the frith, there ascended a thin col- 
umn of smoke. It rose straight on the line of a plummet for more than a 
thousand yards; and then, as reaching a thinner stratum of air, spread out 
equally on every side, like the foliage of a stately tree. Ben Wevis roee 
to the west, white with the yet unwasted snows of winter, and as sharply 
defined in the clear atmosphere as if all its sunny slopes and blue retiring 
hollows had been chiselled in marble. A line of snow ran along the oppo- 
site hills; all above was white, and all below was purple.’ — Old Red 
Sandstone, pp. 6, 7. 


In raising from its bed the large mass of strata which the gunpow- 
der had loosened, on the surface of the solid stone, our young quar- 
rier descried the ridged and furrowed ripple marks which the tide 
leaves upon every sandy shore, and he wondered what had become 
of the waves that had thus fretted the solid rock, and of what ele- 
ment they had been composed. His admiration was equally excited 
by a circular depression in the sandstone, “ broken and flawed in 
every direction, as if it had been the bottom of a pool recently dried 
up, which had shrunk and split in the hardening.” And before the 
lay closed, a series of large stones had rolled down from the clay, 
‘all rounded and water-worn, as if they had been tossed in the sea 
or the bed of a river for hundreds of years.” Was the clay whick. 
enclosed them created on the rock upon which it lay? No workman 
ever manufactures a half-worn article !— were the ejaculations of 
the geologist at his alphabet. 

Our author and his companions were soon removed to an easier 
wrought quarry, and one more pregnant with interest, which had 
been opened ‘in a lofty wall of cliffs that overhangs the northern 


HUGH MILLER. XIX 


shore of the Moray Frith.” Here the geology of the district exhib- 
ited itself in section. 


‘“‘ We see in one place the primary rock, with its veins of granite and 
quartz, — its dizzy precipices of gneiss, and its huge masses of hornblende ; 
we find the secondary rock in another, with its bed of sandstone and 
shale, —its spars, its clays, and its nodul*r limestones. We discover the 
still little known but highly interesting fossils of the Old Red Sandstone 
‘m one deposition; we find the beautifully preserved shells and lignites 
of the lias in another. There are the remains of two several creations at 
once before us. The shore, too, is heaped with rolled fragments of almost 
every variety of rock, — basalts, ironstones, hypersthenes, porphyries, 
bituminous shales, and micaceous schists. In short, the young geologist, 
had he all Europe before him, could hardly choose for himself a better 
field. I had, however, no one to tell me so at the time, for geology had 
not yet travelled so far north; and so, without guide or vocabulary, I had 
to grope my way as I best might, and find out all its wonders for myself. 
But so slow was the process, and so much was I a seeker in the dark, that 
the facts contained in these few sentences were the patient gatherings of 
years.”” — Old Red Sandstone, pp. 9, 10. 


In this rich field of inquiry, our author encountered, almost daily, 
new objects of wonder and instruction. In one nodular mass of 
limestone he found the beautiful ammonite, like one of the finely 
sculptured volutes of an Ionic capital. Within others, fish-scales 
and bivalve shells; and in the centre of another he detected a piece 
of decayed wood. Upon quitting the quarry for the building upon 
which the workmen were to be employed, the workmen received 
nalf a holiday, and our young philosopher devoted this valuable 
interval to search for certain curiously shaped stones, which one of 
the quarriers told him resembled the heads of boarding-pikes, and 
which, under the name of thunder-bolts, were held to be a sovereign 
remedy for cattle that had been bewitched. On the shore two miles 
off, where he expected these remarkable bodies, he found deposits 
quite different cither from the sandstone cliffs or the primary rocks 
further to the west. They consisted of ‘thin strata of limestone, 
alternating with thicker beds of a black slaty substance,” which 
burned with a bright flame and a bituminous odor. Though only 
the eighth part of an inch thick, each layer contained thousands of 
fossils peculiar to the lias, — scallops and gryphites, ammonites, twigs 
and leaves of plants, cones of pine, pieces of charcoal, and scales of 
fishes, —the impressions being of a chalky whiteness, contrasting 
strikingly with their black bituminous lair. Among these fragments 
of animal and vegetable life, he at last detected his ¢hunder-bolt in the 


Cc 


XX HUGH MILLER 


form of a Belemnite, the remains of a kind of cuttle-fish long since 
extinct. 

In the exercise of his profession, which “was a wandering one,” 
our author advanced steadily, though slowly and surely, in his geo- 
logical acquirements. 


“I remember,” says he, “ passing direct on one occasion from the wild 
western coast of Ross-shire, where the Old Red Sandstone leans at a high 
angle against the prevailing quartz rock of the district, to where, on the 
eouthern skirts of Mid-Lothian, the mountain limestone rises amid the 
coal. 1 have resided one season ona raised beach on the Moray Frith. 
I have spent the season immediately following amid she ancient granites 
and contorted schists of the central Highlands. In the north, I have laid 
open by thousands the shells and lignites of the Oolite; in the south, I 
have disinterred from their matrices of stone or of shale the huge reeds 
and tree ferns of the carboniferous period. * * * In the north, there 
occurs a vast gap in the scale. The Lias leans unconformably against 
the Old Red Sandstone; there is no mountain limestone, no coal meas- 
ures, none of the New Red Marls or Sandstones. There are at least 
three entire systems omitted. But the upper portion of the scale is well- 
nigh complete. In one locality we may pass from the Lower to the Upper 
Lias, in another from the Inferior to the Great Oolite, and onward to tht 
Oxford Clay and the Coral Rag. We may explore in a third locality beds 
identical in their organisms with the Wealden of Sussex. In a fourth, we 
find the flints and fossils of the chalk. The lower part of the scale is 
also well-nigh complete. The Old Red Sandstone is amply developed in 
Moray, Caithness, and Ross, and the Grauwacke very extensively in 
Banffshire. But to acquaint one’s self with the three missing formations, 
to complete one’s knowledge of the entire scale, by filling up the 
hiatus, —it is necessary to remove to the south. The geology of the Lo- 
thians is the geology of at least two thirds of the gap, and perhaps a 
little more; —the geology of Arran wants only a few of the upper beds 
of the New Red Sandstone to fill it SoS, ” —- Old Red Sandstone, 
pp. 18-17. 


After having spent nearly fifteen years in the profession of a stone- 
mason, Mr. Miller was promoted to a position more suited to his 
genius. When a bank was established in his native town of Crom- 
arty, he received the appointment of accountant, and he was thus 
employed, for five years, in keeping ledgers and discounting bills. 
When the contest in the Church of Scotland had come to a close, by 
the decision of the House of Lords in the Auchterarder Case, Mr. 
Miller’s celebrated letter to Lord Brougham attracted the particu- 
lar attention of the party which was about to leave the Establish- 
ment, and he was selected as the most competent person to conduef 


HUGH MILLER. xX! 


the Witness newspaper, the principal metropolitan organ of the Free 
Church. The great success which this journal has met with is owing. 
doubtless, to the fine articles, political, ecclesiastical, and geological 
which Mr. Miller has written for it. In the few leisure hours which 
so engrossing an occupation has allowed him to enjoy, he has devoted 
himself to the ardent prosecution of scientific inquiries ; and we trust 
the time is not far distant when the liberality of his country, to whicb 
he has done so much honor, will allow him to give his whole time to 
the prosecution of science. 

Geologists of high character had believed that the Old Red Sand- 
stone was defective in organic remains; and it was not till after ten 
years’ acquaintance with it that Mr. Miller discovered it to be richly 
fossiliferous. The labors of other ten years were required to assign 
to its fossils their exact place in the scale. 

Among the fossils discovered by our author, the Pterichthys o1 
winged fish is doubtless the most remarkable. He had disinterred it 
so early as 1831, but it was only in 1838 that he “introduced it to 
the acquaintance of geologists.” It was not till 1831 that Mr. Miller 
began to receive assistance in his studies from without. In the ap- 
pendix to Messrs. Anderson of Inverness’s admirable Guide to the 
Highlands and Islands of Scotland, which “he perused with intense 
interest,’ he found the most important information respecting the 
geology of the North of Scotland; and during a correspondence witb 
the accomplished authors of that work, many of his views were de- 
veloped, and his difficulties removed. In 1838, he communicated to 
Dr. Malcolmson of Madras, then in Paris, a drawing and description 
of the Pterichthys. His letter was submitted to Agassiz, and subse- 
quently a restored drawing was communicated to the Elgin Scientific 
Society. The great naturalist, as well as the members of the provincial 
society, were surprised at the new form of life which Mr. Miller had 
disclosed, and some of them, no doubt, regarded it with a sceptical eye. 
«‘ Not many months after, however, a true bona fide Pterichthys was 
turned up in one of the newly-discovered beds of Nairnshire.” In his 
last visit to Scotland, Agassiz found six species of the Pterichthys, three 
of which, and the wings of a fourth, were in Mr. Miller’s collection. 

This remarkable animal has less resemblance than any other fossil 
of the Old Red Sandstone to anything that now exists. When first 
brought to view by the single blow of a hammer, there appeared on 
a ground of light-colored limestone the effigy of a creature, fash- 
ioned apparently out of jet, with a body covered with plates, two 
powerful looking arms articulated at the shoulders, a head as en- 


KXU HUGH MILLER. 


tirely lost in the trunk as that of the ray, (or skate,) and a long 
angular tail, equal in length to a third of the entire figure. Its 
general resemblance is to the letter T, — the upper part of the ver 
tical line being swelled out, and the lower part ending in an angular 
point, the two horizontal portions being, in the opinion of Agassiz, 
organs of locomotion. To this remarkable fossil M. Agassiz has 
given the appropriate name of Pterichthys Milleri. An account of it. 
accompanied with two fine specimens, was communicated to the 
Geological Section of the British Association at Glasgow, in Sep- 
tember, 1840; and the most ample details, with accurate drawings, 
were afterwards published, in 1841, in Mr. Miller’s first work, The 
Old Red Sandstone, which was dedicated to Sir Roderick Murchison, 
who was born or the Old Red Sandstone of the North, in the same 
district as Mr. Miller, and whose great acquirements and distin- 
guished labors are known all over the world among scientific men. 
This admirable work has already passed through three editions. 
From the originality and accuracy of its descriptions, and the im- 
portance of the researches which it contains, it has obtained for its 
author a high reputation among geologists; while from the elegance 
and purity of its style, and the force and liveliness of its illustrations, 
it has received the highest praise from its more general readers.* 
Although we have been obliged, from the information which it 
contains of our author’s early studies, to mention the ‘*Old Red 
Sandstone” as if it had been his first work; yet so early as 1830, 
after he had made his first fossil discoveries at Cromarty, he com- 
posed a paper on the subject, (his first published production,) which 
appeared as one of the chapters of a small legendary and descriptive 
work, entitled The Traditional History of Cromarty, which did not 
appear till 1835. This chapter, entitled “The Antiquary of the 
World,” possesses a high degree of interest. After describing the 
scene around him in its pictorial aspect, and under the warm associ- 
ations, which link it with existing life, he surveys it with the cool 
eye of an “ antiquary of the world,” studying its once buried monu- 
ments, and decyphering the alphabet of plants and animals. the 
inieroglyphics which embosom the history of past times and of suc- 





* Mr. Miller is the author also of Scenes and Legends of tie North of Scotland, one 
vor 8vo. ; 4 Letter from one of the Scotch people to the Right Honorable Lord Broughas 
and Vauz, on the opinions expressed by his Lordship in the Auchterarder Case; and Th. 
Wiiggusm of the Old School, as exemplified in the Past History and Preset Position of 
the Church of Scotlind. The second of these works is well characterized by Mr 
Gladstone as ‘‘an ible elegant, and masculine production.” 


HUGH MILLER. XXul 


cessive creations. The gigantic Ben Wevis, with its attendant his, 
rose abruptly to the west. The distant peaks of Ben Vaichard ap- 
peared in the south, and far to the north were descried the lofty hills 
of Sutherland, and even the Ord-hill of Caithness. Descending 
from the towers of nature’s lofty edifice he surveys its ruins, its 
broken sculptures, and its half-defaced inscriptions, as exhibited in 
certain Ichthyic remains of the Lower Old Red Sandstone which had 
then no name, and which were unknown to the most accomplished 
geologists. Among these he specially notices “a confused bitumi- 
nous-looking mass that had much the appearance of a toad or frog,” 
thus shadowing forth in the morning twilight the curious Pterichthys, 
which he was able afterwards, in better specimens, to exhibit in open 
day. As we have already referred, with some minuteness, to the 
fossils which our author had at this time discovered in the great 
charnel-house of the old world, we shall indulge our readers with a 
specimen of the noble sentiments which they inspired, and of the 
beautiful language in which these sentiments are clothed. 


“ But let us quit this wonderful city of the dead, with all its reclining 
obelisks, and all its sculptured tumuli, the memorials of a race that exist 
only in their tombs. And yet, ere we go, it were well, perhaps, to in- 
dulge in some of those serious thoughts which we so naturally associate 
with the solitary burying-ground and the mutilated remains of the 
departed. Let us once more look around us, and say, whether, of all 
men, the Geologist does not stand most in need of the Bible, however 
much he may contemn it in the pride of speculation. We tread on the 
remains of organized and sentient creatures, which, though more numer- 
ous at one period than the whole family of man, have long since ceased 
to exist; the individuals perished one after one — their remains served 
only to elevate the floor on which their descendants pursued the various 
instincts of their nature, and then sunk, like the others, to form a still 
higher layer of soil; and now that the whole race has passed from the 
earth, and we see the animals of a different tribe occupying their places, 
what survives of them but a mass of inert and senseless matter, never 
again to be animated by the mysterious spirit of vitality —that spirit 
which, dissipated in the air, or diffused in the ocean, can, like the sweet 
sounds and pleasant odors of the past, be neither gathered up nor re- 
called. And O, how dark the analogy which would lead us to antici- 
pate a similar fate for ourselves! As individuals, we are but as yesterday ; 
to-morrow we shall be laid in our graves, and the tread of the coming 
generation shall be over our heads. Nay, have we not seen a terrible 
disease sweep away, in a few years, more than eighty millions of the race 
to which we belong; and can we think of this and say that a time may 
not come when, like the fossils of these beds our whole species shall be 


c* 


xxiv HUGH MILLER. 


mingled with the soil, and when, though the sun may look down in his 
strength on our pleasant dwellings and our green fields, there shall be 
silence in all our borders, and desolation in all our gates, and we shall 
have no thought of that past which it is now our delight to recall, and no 
portion in that future which it is now our very nature to anticipate 
Surely it is well to believe that a widely different destiny awaits us— 
that the Go¢c who endowed us with those wonderful powers, which enable 
us to live in every departed era, every coming period, has given us to 
possess these powers forever; that not only does he number the hairs 
of our heads, but that his cares are extended to even our very remains}; 
that our very bones, instead of being left, like the exuvie around us, to 
form the rocks and clays of a future world, shall, like those in the valley 
of vision, be again clothed with muscle and sinew, and that our bodies, 
animated by the warmth and vigor of life, shall again connect our souls 
to the matter existing around us, and be obedient to every impulse of the 
will. It is surely no time, when we walk amid the dark cemeteries of a 
departed world, and see the cold blank shadows of the tombs falling 
drearily athwart the way —it is surely no time to extinguish the light 
given us to shine so fully and so cheerfully on our own proper path, 
merely because its beams do not enlighten the recesses that yawn around 
us. And O, what more unworthy of reasonable men than to reject so 
consoling a revelation on no juster quarrel, than when it unveils to us 
much of what could not otherwise be known, and without the knowledge 
of which we could not be other than unhappy, it leaves to the invigorat- 
ing exercises of our own powers whatever, in the wide circle of creation, 
lies fully within their grasp!” — The Antiquary of the World, pp. 56 - 58. 


The next work published by Mr. Miller was entitled “ First Im- 
pressions of England and its People,’* a popular and interesting 
volume, which has already gone through two editions, and which 
may be read with equal interest by the geologist, the philanthropist, 
and the general reader. It is full of knowledge and of anecdote, and 
is written in that attractive style which commands the attention even 
of the most incurious readers. 

This delightful work, though only in one volume, is equal to three 
of the ordinary type, and cannot fail to be perused with high gratifi- 
cation by all classes of readers. It treats of every subject which 1s 
presented to the notice of an accomplished traveller while he visits 
the great cities and romantic localities of merry England. We know 
of no tour in England written by a native in which so much pleasant 
reading and substantial instruction are combined; and though we 
are occasionally stopped in a very delightful locality by a precipice 


* London, 1847, pp. 409 


HUGH MILLER. XV 


of the Old Red Sandstone, or frightened by a disinterred skeleton, 
or sobered by the burial-service over Paleozoic graves, we soon 
recover our equanimity, and again enter upon the sunny path to 
which our author never fails to restore us. : 

Mr. Miller’s new work, the ‘ Footprints of the Creator,” of whicb 
we publish now another edition, authorized by the writer, is very 
appropriately dedicated to Sir Philip Grey Egerton, Bart., M. P. for 
Cheshire —a gentleman who possesses a magnificent collection of 
fossis, and whose skill and acquirements in this department of geol- 
ogy is known and appreciated both in Europe and America. The 
work itself is divided into fifteen chapters, in which the author treats _ 
of the fossil geology of the Orkneys, as exhibited in the vicinity of 
Stromness; of the development hypothesis, and its consequences ; 
of the history and structure of that remarkable fish, the Asterolepis ; 
of the fishes of the Upper and Lower Silurian rocks; of the progress 
uf degradation, and its history; of the Lamarckian hypothesis of the 
origin of plants, and its consequences; of the Marine and Terrestrial 
floras; and of fina causes, and their bearing on geological history. 
In the course of these chapters Mr. Miller discusses the development 
hypothesis, or the hypothesis of natural law, as maintained by Lam- 
arck and by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, and has sub- 
jected it, in its geological aspect, to the most rigorous examination. 
Driven by the discoveries of Lord Rosse from the domains of astron- 
omy, where it once seemed to hold a plausible position, it might 
have lingered with the appearance of life among the ambiguities of 
the Paleozoic formations; but Mr. Miller has, with an ingenuity and 
patience worthy of a better subject, stripped it even of its semblance 
of truth, and restored to the Creator, as Governor of the universe, 
that power and those functions which he was supposed to have re- 
signed at its birth. 

Having imposed upon himself the task of examining in detail the 
various fossiliferous formations of Scotland, our author extended his 
inquiries into the mainland of Orkney, and resided for some time in 
the vicinity of the busy seaport town of Stromness, as a central point 
from whi:h the structure of the Orkney group of islands could be 
most advantageously studied. Like that of Caithness, the geology 
of these islands owes its principal interest to the immense develop- 
ment of the Lower Old Red Sandstone formation, and to the singular 
abundance of its vertebrate fossils. Though the Orkneys contain 
only the ¢hird part of the Old Red Sandstone, which, but a few years 
ago, was supposed to be the least productive in fossils of any of the 


«xvi HUGH MILLER. 


geological formations, yet it furnishes, according to Mr. Miller, more 
fossil fish than every other geological system in England, Scptland, 
and Wales, from the Coal Measures to the Chalk, inclusive. It is, in 
short, *‘ the land of fish,’ and “could supply with ichthyolites, by 
the ton and by the ship-load, the museums of the world.’’ Its vari- 
ous deposits, with the curious organisms which they inclose, have 
been upheaved from their original position against a granitic axis, 
about six miles long and one broad, ‘ forming the great back-bone 
of the western district of the Island Pomona; and on this granitic 
axis, fast jambed in between a steep hill and the sea, stands the town 
of Stromness.” 

The mass or pile of strata thus uplifted is described by Mr. Miller 
as a three-barred pyramid resting on its granite base, exhibiting 
three broad tiers — red, black, and gray — sculptured with the hier- 
oglyphics in which its history is recorded. The great conglomerate 
base on which it rests, covering from 10,000 to 15,000 square miles, 
from the depth of from 100 to 400 feet, consists of-rough sand and 
water-worn pebbles ; and above this have been deposited successive 
strata of mud, equal in height to the highest of our mountains, now 
containing the remains of millions and tens of millions of fish which. 
had perished in some sudden and mysterious catastrophe. 

In the examination of the different beds of the three-barred for- 
mation, our author discovered a well-marked bone, like a petrified 
large roofing nail, in a grayish-colored layer of hard flag, about 100 
yards over the granite, and about 160 feet over the upper stratum 
of the conglomerate. This singular bone, which Mr. Miller has rep- 
resented in a figure, was probably the oldest vertebrate organism 
yet discovered in Orkney. It was 5§ inches long, 24 inches across 
the head, and 3-10ths of an inch thick in the stem, and formed a 
characteristic feature of the Asterolepis, as yet the most gigantic of 
the ganoid fishes, and probably one of the first of the Old Red Sand- 
stone. In his former researches, our author had found that all of the 
many hundred ichthyolites which he had disinterred from the Lower 
Old Red Sandstone were comparatively of a small size, while those in 
the Upper Old Red were of great bulk; and hence he had naturally 
inferred, that vertebrate life had increased towards the close of the 
system — that, in short, it began with an age of dwarfs, and ended 
with an age of giants; but he had thus greatly erred, like the sup- 
porters of the development system, in founding positive conclusions 
on merely negative evidence; for here, at the very base of the sys- 
tem, where no dwarfs were to be found, he had iiscovered one of the 
most colossal of its giants. 


HUGH MILLER. XXVIi 


After this most important discovery, Mr. Miller extended his in- 
quiries easterly for several miles along the bare and unwooded Lake 
of Stennis, about fourteen miles in circumference, and divided into 
an upper ana lower sheet of water by two long promontories jutting 
out from each side and nearly meeting in the middle. ‘The sea enters 
this lake through the openings of a long rustic bridge, and hence the 
lower division of the lake “is salt in its nether reaches, and brack- 
ish in its upper ones; while the higher division is merely brackish 
in its nether reaches, and fresh enough in its upper ones to be pota- 
ble.” The fauna and flora of the lake are therefore of a mixed char- 
acter, the marine and fresh water animals having each their own 
reaches, though each kind makes certain encroachments on the prov- 
ince of the other. 

Tn the marine and lacustrine floras of the lake, Mr. Miller observed 
changes still more palpable. At the entrance of the sea, the Fucus 
nodosus and Fucus vesiculosus flourish in their proper form and mag- 
nitude. A little farther on in the lake, the F. nodosus disappears, 
and the F. vesiculosus, though continuing to exist for mile after 
mile, grows dwarfish and stunted, and finally disappears, giving 
place to rushes and other aquatic grasses, till the lacustrine has en- 
tirely displaced the marine flora. From these two important facts, 
the existence of the fragment of Aséerolepis in the lower flagstones 
of the Orkneys, and of the “curiously mixed semi-manme semi- 
lacustrine vegetation in the Loch of Stennis,’”’ which our author 
regards as bearing directly on the development hypothesis, he takes 
occasion to submit that hypothesis to a severe examination, and to 
point out its consequences — its incompatibility with the great truths 
of morality and revealed religion. According to Professor Oken 
one of the ablest supporters of the development theory, ‘ ‘There are 
two kinds of generation in the world, the creation proper, and the 
propagation that is sequent thereon, or the original and secondary 
generation. Consequently, no organism has been created of larger 
size than an infusorial point. No organism is, or ever has been 
created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is large has not been 
created, but developed. Man has not been created, but developed.” 
Hence it follows that during the great geological period, when race 
after race was destroyed, and new forms of life called into being, 
‘nature had been pregnant with the human race,” and that immor- 
tal and intellectual Man is but the development of the Brute—. 
itself the development of some monad or ‘mollusc, which has been 
smitten into life by the action of electricity upon a portion of gelat- 
inous matter. 


KXVili HUGH MILLER. 


If the development theory be true, “the early fossils ought to be 
very small in size,” and ‘ very low in organization.” In the earliest 
strata we ought to find only * mere embryos and fetuses; and if we 
find instead the full-grown and mature, then must we hold that the 
testimony of geology is not only not im accordance with the theory, 
but in positive opposition to it.” Having laid this down as the 
principle by which the question is to be decided, our author proceeds 
to consider ‘‘ what are the facts.” The Asterolepis of Stromness seems 
to be the oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient geologi- 
cal system of Scotland, in which vertebrate remains occur. It is 
probably the oldest Coelacanth that the world has yet produced, for 
there is no certain trace of this family in the great Silurian system, 
which lies underneath, and on which, according to our existing 
knowledge, organic existence first began. ‘ How, then,” asks Mr. 
Miller, ‘on the two relevant points — bulk and organization — does 
it answer to the demands of the development hypothesis? Was it a 
mere foetus of the finny tribe, of minute size and imperfect embry- 
onic faculty? Or was it of, at least, the ordinary bulk, and, for its 
class, of the average organization ?”’ 

In order to answer these questions, Mr. Miller proceeds in his third 
chapter to give the recent history of the Asterolepis; in his fourth, 
to ascertain the cerebral development of the earlier vertebrata; and 
in his fifth chapter to describe the structure, bulk, and aspect of the 
Asterolepis. In the rocks of Russia certain fossil remains had been 
long ago discovered, of such a singular nature as to have perplexed 
Lamarck and other naturalists. Their true place among fishes was 
subsequently ascertained by M. Eichwald, a living naturalist; and 
Sir Roderick Murchison found that they were Ichthyolites of the 
Old Red Sandstone. Agassiz gave them the name of Chelonichthys ; 
but in consequence of very fine specimens having been found in the 
Old Red Sandstone of Russia, which Professor Asmus of Dorpat 
sent to the British Museum, and which exhibited star-like markings, 
he abandoned his name of Chelonichthys, and adopted that of Aster- 
olepis, or star-scale, which Eichwald had proposed. Many points, 
however, respecting this curious fossil remained to be determined, 
and it was fortunate for science that Mr. Miller was enabled to ac- 
complish this object by means of a variety of excellent specimens 
which he received from Mr. Robert Dick, “an intelligent tradesman 
of Thurso, one of those working men of Scotland, of active curiosity 
and well developed intellect, that give character and standing to the 
test,” Agassiz had inferred, from very imperfect fragments, tLat 
the Asterolepis was a strongly-helmed fish of the Celacanths, or hollow 


HUGH MILLER. Xxb 


spine family —that it was probably 2 flat-headed animal, and that 
the discovery of a head or of a jaw might prove that the genus 
Dendrodus did not differ from it. All these conjectures were com- 
pletely confirmed by Mr. Miller, after a careful examination of the 
specimens of Mr. Dick. 

Before proceeding to describe the structure of the gigantic Aster- 
olepis, Mr. Miller devotes a long and elaborate chapter to the subject 
of the cerebral development of the earlier vertebrata, in order to 
ascertain in what manner their true brains were lodged, and to dis- 
cover the modification which the cranium, as their protecting box, 
received in subsequent periods. This inquiry, which he has con- 
ducted with great skill and ability, is not only highly interesting in 
itself, but will be found to have a direct bearing on the great ques- 
tion which it is his object to discuss and decide. 

The facts and reasonings contained in this chapter will, we doubt 
not, shake to its very base the bold theory of Professor Oken, which 
has been so generally received abroad, and which is beginning to 
find supporters even among the solid thinkers of our own country. 
In the Isis of 1818, Professor Lorenz Oken has given the following 
account of the hypothesis to which we allude. “In August, 1806,” 
says he, “I made a journey over the Hartz. I slid down through 
the wood on the south side, and straight before me, at my very feet, 
lay a most beautiful blanched skull of a hind. I picked it up, turnec 
it round, regarded it intensely ; — the thing was done. ‘It is a ver- 
tebral column,’ struck me like a flood of lightning, ‘to the marrow 
and bone;’ and since that time the skull has been regarded as a 
vertebral column.” 

This remarkable hypothesis was at first received with enthusiasm 
by the naturalists of Germany, and, among others, by Agassiz, who, 
from grounds not of a geological kind, has more recentiy rejected it. 
It has been adopted by our distinguished countryman, Professor 
Owen, and forms the central idea in his lately published and inge- 
nious work “On the Nature of Limbs.” The conclusion at which he 
arrives, that the fore-limbs of the vertebrata are the ribs of the oc- 
cipital bone or vertebra set free, and (in all the vertebrata higher in 
the scale than the ordinary fishes) carried down along the vertebral 
column by a sort of natural dislocation, is a deduction from the idea 
that startled Professor Oken in the forest of the Hartz. Whatever 
support this hypothesis might have expected from Geology, has been 
struck from beneath it by this remarkable chapter of Mr. Miller’s 
work; and though anatomists may for a while maintain it under the 


XXX HUGH MILLER. 


influence of so high an authority as Professor Owen, we are much 
mistaken if it ever forms a part of the creed of the geologist. Mr. 
Miller indeed has, by a most skilful examination of the heads of the 
earliest vertebrata known to geologists, proved that the hypothesia 
derives no support from the structure which they exhibit, and 
Agassiz has even upon general principles rejected it as untenable. 

Mr. Miller’s next chapter on the structure, bulk, and aspect of the 
Asterolepis, is, like that which precedes it, the work of a master, 
evincing the highest powers of observation and analysis. Its size in 
the larger specimens must have been very great; and from a com: 
parison of the proportion of the head in the Ganoids to the lengtn 
of the body, which is sometimes as one to five, or one to six, or one 
to six and a half, or even one to seven, our author concludes that the 
total length of the specimens in his possession must have been at 
least eight feet three inches, or from nine feet nine to nine feet ten 
inches. The remains of an Asterolepis found by Mr. Dick at Thurso, 
indicate a length of from twelve feet five to thirteen feet eight inches; 
and one of the Russian specimens of Professor Asmus must have 
been from eighteen to twenty-three feet long. ‘Hence,’ says Mr. 
Miller, “in the not unimportant circumstance of size — the most 
ancient Celacanths yet known, instead of taking their places agree- 
bly to the demands of the development hypothesis among the sprats, 
sticklebacks, and minnows of their class, took their place among its 
huge basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky swordfishes. 
They were giants, not dwarfs.” Again, judging by the analogies 
which its structure exhibits to that of fishes of the existing period, 
the Asterolepis must have been a fish high in the scale of organ1- 
zation. 

A specimen of Asterolepis, discovered by Mr. Dick, among the 
Thurso rocks, and sent to Mr. Miller, exhibited the singular phe- 
nomenon of a quantity of thick tar lying beneath it, which stuck to 
the fingers when lifting the pieces of rock. ‘What had been once 
the nerves, muscles, and blood of this ancient Ganoid, still lay under 
its bones,’’ a phenomenon which our author had previously seen be- 
neath the body of a poor suicide, whose grave in a sandy bank had 
been laid open by the encroachments of a river, the sand beneath it 
having been “ consolidated into a dark colored pitchy mass,” extend- 
ing a full yard beneath the body. In like manner, the animal juices 
of the Asterolepis had preserved its remains, by “the pervading bit- 
umen, greatly more conservative in its effects than the oil an gum 
of an old Egyptian undertaker.” The bones, though black ag pitch 


HUGH MILLER. XX, 


retained to 4 cousiderable degree the peculiar q aalities of the originai 
substance, in the same manner as the adipocire of wet burying- 
zrounds preserves fresh and green the bones which it encloses. 

In support of his anti-development views, Mr. Miller devotes his 
next and siath chapter to the recent history, order, and size of the 
tishes of the Upper and Lower Silurian rocks. Of these ancient 
formations, the bone bed of the Upper Ludlow rocks is the only cne 
which, besides defensive spines of fish, contains teeth, fragments of 
jaws. and shagreen points, whereas, in the inferior deposits, defensive 
pjines alone arefound. The species discovered by Professor Phillips, 
in the Wenlock shale, were microscopic; and the author of the Ves- 
tiges took advantage of this insulated fact to support his views, by 
pronouncing the little creatures to which the species belonged as 
the foetal embryos of their class. Mr. Miller has, however, even on 
this ground, defeated his opponent. By comparing the defensive 
spines of the Onchus Murchisoni of the Upper Ludlow bed with 
those of a recent Spinax Acanthias, or dog-fish, and of the Cestracion 
Phillippi, or Port Jackson shark, he arrives at the conclusion, that 
the fishes to which the species belonged must be all of considerable 
size; and in the following chapter on the high standing of the Placoids 
he shews that the same early fishes were high in intelligence and 
organization. ; 

In his ninth chapter on the History and Progress of Degradation, 
our author enters upon a new and interesting subject. The object 
of it is to determine the proper ground on which the standing of the 
earlier vertebrata should be decided, namely, the test of what he 
terms homological symmetry of organization. In nature there are 
monster families, just as there are in families monster individuals — 
men without feet, hands, or eyes, or with them in a wrong place — 
sheep with legs growing from their necks, ducklings with wings on 
their haunches, and dogs and cats with more legs than they require 
We have thus, according to our author — 1, monstrosity through defect 
of parts ; 2, monstrosity through redundancy of parts ; and 3, monstros- 
ity through displacement of parts. ‘This last species, united in some 
vages with the other two, our author finds curiously exemplified in 
the geological history of the fish, which he considers better known 
than that of any other division of the vertebrata; and he is con- 
vinced that it is from a survey of the progress of degradation in the 
great Ichthyic division that the standing of the kingly fishes of the 
earlier periods is tc be determined. 

In the e2rliest vertebrate period, namely, the Silurian, our author 

D 


XXXIl HUGH MILLER. 


shews that the fishes were homologically symmetrical in their organ 

ization, as exhibited in the Placoids. In the second great Ichthyic 
period, that of the Old Red Sandstone, he finds the first example in 
she class of fishes ot monstrosity, by displacement of parts. In all the 
canoids of the period, there is the same departure from symmetry 
as would take place in man if his neck was annihilated, and the 
arms stuck to the back of the head. In the Coccosteus and Pter- 
tchthys of the same period, he finds the first example of degradation 
through defect, the former resembling a human monster without hands, 
and the latter one without feet. After ages and centuries nave 
passed away, and then after the termination of the Paleozoic period, 
a change takes place in the formation of the fish'tail. ‘* Other ages 
and centuries pass away, during which the reptile class attains to its 
fullest development in point of size, organization, and number; and 
then, after the times of the cretaceous deposits have begun, we find 
yet another remarkable monstrosity of displacement introduced 
among all the fishes of one very numerous order, and among no in- 
considerable proportion of the fishes of another. In the newly- 
introduced Ctenoids (Acanthopterygii,) and in those families of the 
Cycloids which Cuvier erected into the order Malacopterygii sub- 
brachiati, the hinder limbs are brought forward and stuck on to the 
base of the previously misplaced fore limbs. All the four limbs, by 
a strange monstrosity of displacement, are crowded into the place 
of the extinguished neck. And such, in the present day, is the 
prevalent type among fishes. Monstrosity through defect is aisc 
found to increase; so that the snake-like apoda, or feet-wanting 
fishes, form a numerous order, some of whose genera are devoid, as 
in the common eels and the congers, of only the hinder limbs, while 
in others, as in the genera Murena and Synbranchus, both hinder and 
fore-limbs are wanting.” From these and other facts, our author 
concludes that as in existing fishes we find many more proofs of the 
monstrosity, both from displacement and defect of parts, than in all 
the other three classes of the vertebrata, and as these monstrosities 
did not appear early, but late, ‘‘the progress of the race as a whole, 
though it still retains not a few of the higher forms, has been a 
progress not of development from the low to the high, but of degra- 
dation from the high to the low.” An extreme example of the 
degradation of distortion, superadded to that of displacement, may 
be seen in the flounder, plaice, halibut, or turbot, — fishes of a family 
of which there is no trace in the earlier periods. The creature is 
twisted half round and laid on its side. The tail, too, is horizontal 


HUGH MILLER. XXX1U 


Halt the features uf its head are twisted to one side, and the other 
half to the other, while its wry mouth is in keeping with its squint 
eyes. One jaw is straight, and the other like a bow; and while one 
contains from four to siz teeth, the other contains from thirty to 
thirty-five. 

Aided by facts like these, an ingenious theorist might, as our sau- 
thor remarks, “get up as unexceptionable a theory of degradation 
2s of development.” But however this may be, the principle of 
degradation actuaily exists, and ‘the history of its progress in crea- 
tion bears directly against the assumption that the earlier vertebrata 
were of a lower type than the vertebrata of the same Ichthyic class 
which exist now.’ 

In his next and tenth chapter, our author controverts with his 
usual power the argument in favor of the development hypothesis, 
drawn from the predominance of the Brachiopods among the Silurian 
Moliuscs. The existence of the highly organized Cephalopods, in 
the same formation, not only neutralizes this argument, but author- 
izes the conclusion that an animal of a very high order of organiza- 
tion existed in the earliest formation. It is of no consequence 
whether the Cephalopods, or the Brachiopods were most numerous. 
Had there been only one cuttle fish in the Silurian seas, and a mil- 
lion of Brachiopods, the fact would equally have overturned the de- 
velopment system. 

In the same chapter, Mr. Miller treats of the geological history of 
the Fossil flora, which has been pressed into the service of the de- 
velopment hypothesis. On the authority of Adolphe Brongniart, it 
was maintained that, previous to the age of the Lias, “ Nature had 
failed to achieve a tree—and that the rich vegetation of the Coal 
Measures had been exclusively composed of magnificent immaturities 
of the vegetable kingdom, of gigantic ferns and club mosses, that 
attained to the size of forest trees, and of thickets of the swamp- 
loving horse-tail family of plants.” True exogenous trees, however, 
do exist of vast size, and in great numbers, in all the coal-fields of 
our own country, as has been proved by Mr. Miller. Nay, he him. 
self discovered in the Old Red Sandstone, Lignite, which is proved 
to have formed part of a true gymnospermous tree, represented by 
the pines of Europe and America, or more probably, as Mr. Miller 
believes, by the Araucarians of Chili and New Zealand. This im- 
portant discovery is pregnant with instruction. The ancient Conifer 
must have waved its green foliage over dry land, and it is not prob- 
able that it was the only tree in the primeval forest. «The ship 


XXXIV HUGH MILLER. 


varpenter,”’ as our author observes, ‘might have hopefully taker 
axe in hand to explore the woods for some such stately pine as the 
ane described by Milton, — 


“Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great admiral.’ ”’ 


Viewing this olive leaf of the Old Red Sandstone as not at a'J devoia 
of poetry, our author invites us to a voyage from the latest forma- 
tion up to the first zone of the Silurian formation, — thus passing 
from ancient to still more ancient scenes of being, 
the commencement of our voyage, a graceful intermixture of land 


and finding, as at 


and water, continent, river, and sea. 

But though the existence of a true Placoid, a real vertebrated fish, 
in the Cambrian limestone of Bala, and of true wood at the base of 
the Oid Red Sandstone, are utterly incompatible with the develop- 
inent hypothesis, its supporters, thus driven to the wall, may take 
shelter under the vague and unquestioned truth that the lower 
plants and animals preceded the higher, and that the order of crea- 
tion was fish, reptiles, birds, mammalia, quadrumana, and man. 
From this resource, too, our author has cut off his opponents, and 
proceeds to show that such an order of creation, “ at once wonderful 
and beautiful,’’ does not afford even the slightest presumption in 
favor of the hypothesis which it is adduced to support. 

This argument is carried on in a popular and amusing dialogue in 
the eleventh chapter. Mr. Miller shows, in the clearest manner, that 
‘superposition is not parental relation,” or that an organism lying 
above another gives us no ground for believing that the lower or- 
ganism was the parent of the higher. The theorist, however, looks 
only at those phases of truth which are in unison with his own 
views; and, when truth presents no such favorable aspect, he finally 
wraps himself up in the folds of ignorance and ambiguity — the 
winding-sheet of error refuted and exposed. We have not yet pen- 
etrated, says he, in feeble accents, to the formations which represent 
the dawn of being, and the simplest organism may yet be detected 
beneath the lowest fossiliferous rocks. This undoubtedly may be, 
and Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Leonard Horner are of opinion that 
such rocks may yet be discovered; while Sir Roderick Murchison 
and Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Miller are of an opposite opinion 
But even were such rocks discovered to-morrow, it would not follow 
that their organisms gave the least support to the development hy: 


HUGH MILLER. XXXV 


pothesis. In the year 1837, when fishes were not discovered in the 

Upper Silurian rocks, the theorist would have rightly predicted the 

existence of lower fossiliferous beds; but when they are discovered, 

and their fossils examined, they furnish the strongest argument that 

could be desired against the theory they were expected to sustain. 

This fact, no doubt, is so far in favor of the supposition that there 

may be still lower fossil-bearing strata ; but, as Mr. Miller observes, 

“The pyramid of organized existence, as it ascends into the by-past 
eternity, inclines sensibly towards its apex, —that apex of ‘begin- 
ning’ on which, on far other than geological grounds, it is our 
privilege to believe. The broad base of the superstructure planted. 
on the existing scene stretches across the entire scale of life, animal 
and vegetable; but it contracts as it rises into the past ; — man, -- 

the quadrumana, — the quadrupedal man, —the bird and the rep. 

tile are each in succession struck from off its breadth, till we at 
length see it with the vertebrata, represented by only the fish, nar- 

rowing as it were to a point; and though the clouds of the upper 
region may hide its apex, we infer, from the declination of its sides, 
that it cannot penetrate much farther into the profound.” 

In our author’s next chapter, the twelfth of the series, he proceeds 
to examine the “ Lamarckian hypothesis of the origin of plants, and 
its consequences.” 

In his thirteenth chapter, on “The two Floras, marine and terres- 
trial,” he has shown that all our experience is opposed to the opin- 
ion, that the one has been transmuted into the other. Ifthe marine 
had been converted into terrestrial vegetation, we ought to have, in 
the Lake of Stennis, for example, plants of an intermediate charac- 
ter between the alge of the sea, and the monocotyledons of the 
lake. But no such transition-plants are found. The alge, as our 
author observes, become dwarfish and ill-developed. They cease to 
exist as the water becomes fresher, “ until at length we find, instead 
of the brown, rootless, flowerless fucoids and confervz of the ocean, 
the green, rooted, flowering flags, rushes, and aquatic grasses of the 
fresh water. Many thousands of years have failed to originate a 
single intermediate plant.” The same conclusion may be drawn 
from the character of the vegetation along the extensive shores of 
Britain and Ireland. No botanist has ever found a single plant in 
the transition state. 

The fourteenth chapter of the “ Footprints” will be perused witt 
great interest by the general reader. It is a powerful and argumen 
tative exposure of the development hypothesis, ard of the manner 

D * 


XAAVi HUGH MILLER. 


in which the subject has been treated in the ‘‘ Vestiges.” Whether 
we consider it in 1ts nature, in its history, or in the character of the 
intellects with whom it originated, or by whom it has been received 
and supported, Mr. Miller has shown that it has nothing to recom- 
mend it. It existed as a wild dream before Geology had any. being 
as a science. It was broached more than a century ago by De 
Maillet, who knew nothing of the geology even of his day. In a 
translation of his Tellamed, published in 1750, Mr. Miller finds very 
nearly the same account given of the origin of plants and animals, 
as that in the ‘“ Vestiges,’’ and in which the sea is described as that 
‘‘oreat and fruitful womb of nature, in which organization and life 
first begin.” Lamarck, though a skilful botanist and conchologist, 
was unacquainted with geology; and as he first published his devel- 
opment hypothesis in 1802, (an hypothesis identical with that of the. 
*« Vestiges,’’) it is probable that he was not then a very skilful zoolo- 
gist. Nor has Professor Oken any higher claims to geological acquire- 
ments. He confesses that he wrote the first edition of his work in 
akind of inspiration! and it is not difficult to estimate the intelli- 
gence of the inspiring idol that announced to the German sage that 
the globe was a vast crystal, a little flawed in the facets, and that 
quartz, feldspar, and mica, the three constituents of granite, were 
the hail-drops of heavy showers of stone that fell into the original 
ocean, and accumulated into rocks at the bottom ! 

Such is the unscientific parentage of the theories promulgated in 
the “ Vestiges.”” But the author of this work appeals in the first 
instance to science. Astronomy, Geology, Botany, and Zoology are 
called upon to give evidence in his favor; but the astronomer, geol- 
ogist, botanist, and the zoologist, all refuse him their testimony, deny 
his premises, and reject his results. ‘It is not,’’ as Mr. Miller hap- 
pily observes, ‘* the illiberal religionist that casts him off. It is the 
inductive philosopher.” Science addresses him in the language of 
the possessed: “'The astronomer I know, and the geologist I know; 
but who are ye?” Thus left alone in a cloud of star-dust, or in 
brackish water between the marine and terrestrial flora, he “ appeals 
from science to the want of it,’’ casts a stone at our Scientific Insti- 
tutions, and demands a jury of ‘ordinary readers,” as the only 
“ tribunal” by which “ the new philosophy is to be truly and righte- 
ously judged.” 

The last and jifteenth chapter of Mr. Miller’s work, * On the Bear- 
ing of Final Causes on Geologic History,” if read with care and. 
thought, will prove at once delightful and instructive. The princiy le 


HUGH MILLER. xxxXV 


of final causes, or the conditions of existence, affords a wide scope ta 
our reason in Natural History, but especially in Geology. It be- 
comes an interesting inquiry, if any reason can be assigned why at 
certain periods species began to exist, and became extinct after the 
lapse of lengthened periods of time, and why the higher classes of 
being succeeded the lower in the order of creation? The incom- 
pleteness of geological science, however, does not permit us to re- 
move, for the present, the veil which hangs over this mysterious 
chronology ; but our author is of opinion that in about a quarter of 
a century, in a favored locality like the British Islands, geologi- 
cal history “ will assume a very extraordinary form.” 

It is a singular fact, which will yet lead to singular results, that 

Cuvier’s arrangement of the four classes of vertebrate animals should 
exhibit the same order as that in which they are found in the strata 
of the earth. In the jish, the average proportion of the brain to the 
spinal cord is only as 2 tol. In the reptile, the ratio is 24 to 1. In 
the dird, itis as 3to 1. In the mammalia, it is as 4 to 1; andin man, 
it is as 23 to 1. No less remarkable is the foetal progress of the 
human brain. It first becomes a brain resembling that of a fish; 
then it grows into the form of that of a reptile; then into that of a 
dird; then into that of a mammiferous quadruped, and finally it 
Ssumes the form of a human brain, “thus comprising in its fetal 
progress an epitome of geological history, as if man were in himself 
a compendium of all animated nature, and of kin to every creature 
that lives.” 

With these considerations, Mr. Miller has brought his subject to 
the point at which Science in its onward progress now stands. It is 
to embryology we are in future to look for further information upon 
the most intimate relations which exist between all organized beings. 
We may fairly entertain the hope that the time is not far when we 
shet not only fully understand the Plan of Creation, but even lift 
some corner of the veil which has hitherto prevented us from form- 
ing adequate ideas of the first introduction of animal and vegetable 
life upon earth, and of the changes which both kingdoms have un- 
dergone in the succession of geological ages. 


L. AGASSIZ. 
Campnipar, September, 1850 


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f a) eg if ‘swat 


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aes ay wooing heals yer oos Seneca ele Hie sean S 
sibs # pe Hk aut Hotere cite Bs as oY it peer : 


by Sef dtr etch fonts pea sta Fe cd “r= eR ae ag 
i yah cat Kawa Poon aeba ale HR iucue calle gs 
ifanb: Cate AR pie bad ater! 2k ta net seRerag ne ae 
sien upe RO Mm CAR 


mp 


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“ty BY ; x: F .} ws 





CONTENTS 


rN) ) 
STROMNESS AND [TS ASTEROLEPIS.— THE LAKE OF STENNIS. . ae Dp 
‘HE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ,... 37 
THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS.—ITS FAMILY... . 48 
CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA, — ITS AP- 
PARENT PRINCIPLE . . etricums Wie Mss [ioMeit ta ches ofl ou isiewe - - 62 
THE ASTEROLEPIS.—ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND ASPECT . 7 « 94 
FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS, UPPER AND LOWER. — THEIR RE- 
CENT HISTORY, ORDER, AND SIZE ....... chr otratieds, Loo 


HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS.— OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED .., 147 
THE PLACOID BRAIN. — EMBRYONIC CHARACTERISTICS NOT NECES- 

SARIN VOR tAgLOWE ORDER (sists oe ster: . ae te 160 
THE PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION.—ITS HISTORY mbes r : 8) 
EVIDENCE OF THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS. — OF THE FOSSIZ FLORA. — 

ANCIENTS TREE ies Gomes vs ec. - 205 
SUPERPOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION. — THER BEGINNINGS OF 

RE Ee all aitoul sus ote est @h ode aaae Meier oust to Se sp = «930 
LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS.— iTS CONSE- 


QUENCES . . "243 


mex! CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

THE TWO FLORAS, MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. — BEARING OF T4AE 
EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT .. Brey hy? oe. teh Oe : Lud 

THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. — OLDER 
THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS . . oes Haley LAR 277 

FINAL CAUSES — THEIR BEARING 2N GEOLOGIC HISTORY —CONCLU- 
810% * 382 


PrP WO Ww er 


LIST OF WOOD-CUTS 


Internai ridge of hyoid plate of Asterolepis 


. Shagreen of Raja clavata :— of Sphagodus 
- Scales of Acanthodes sulcatus : —shagreen of Scyllium steliare 


- Scales of Cheiracanthus mucrolepidotus:—shagreen of Spinaz 
Acanthias ... R a raries Wea Sh an bert afl ta 
. Section of shagreen of Soyllium uae. —of scales of Cheira- 
POM USLITCTOLETHDOLUS Ge ote egy. Re See a! athe wait 
- Scales of Osteolepis microlepidotus :— of an undescribed species 


of Glyptolepis os ni 545 PEE OR erg te ee a ar ie 
. Osseous points of Placoid Granfirs Ee esas’ 


Upper surface of craniumof Cod... . 
Cranial buckler of Coccosteus ..... 


. Cranial buckler of Osteolepis . .... 
. Upper surface of head of Osteolepis . . . 
. Under surface of head of Osteolepis . . . 
. Head of Osteolepis, seen in profile .. . 
. Cranial buckler of Diplopterus 

SOLU Aes 

. Palatal Sea aie group of palatal teeth, Sf Dipterus . 
. Cranial buckler of Dipterus . . . .. . 
. Base of cranium of Dipterus . .. 
mUnUer Jaw Of INpLAPUS On se | gs 
. Longitudinal section of head of Dipterus 


23. Section of vertebral centrum of Thornback 


. Dermal tubercles of Asterolepis . ... 
ssoales of -Asterolepia’) 0827). 4-8, es 


oo 


e 


. Osseous centrum of Spinax Acanthias :— of Raja sere 
- Portions of caudal fin of Cheiracanthus :—of Cheirolepis 


FBSRSBSRSRSBSF®SSNSN 


74 


xiii LIST OF WOOD-CUTS. 


26 . 
27. Cranial buckler of Asterolepis . . . «© « «© «© «© « © «© 
28. Inner surface of cranial buckler of Asteroleps . . .. - 
29. Plates of cranial buckler of Asterolems .... 

30. Portion of under jaw of Asterolepis . ....-. + 
31. Inner side of portion of under jaw of Asterolepis 

32. Portion of transverse section of reptile tooth of rams : 
33. Section of jaw of Asterolepis . . . »- »+ + + «+ + «© « 
34.,Maxillary bone? .. . oie PC ye eee art ae 
35. Inner surface of ees of Msteroleis § anes PoP oo 
36. Hyoid plate... Seat tatl ane kre helt ely ete 
37. Nail-like bone of nyoid wife sath Nyc: corte oar ie ate Sees 
88. Shoulder plate of Asterolepis . . « « © «6 © © © © «@ 
39. Dermal bones of Asterolepis . « « «© © © © e eo @ «@ 
40. Internal bones of Asterolepis . . «© 2 « «© © «© @ « « 
OL SD CO ue Pact te i techie. ete. e) aia Ute ene tae meets 
42. Ischium of Sse baie aia - Pid gregh Sy easy 
13. Joint of ray of Thornback : — of ‘aston Tek ite et 
44, Coprolites of Asterolepis . . . « «© © «+ « © « 

45. Hyoid plate of Thurso Asterolepis 


. Portion of carved surface of scale . Bate Brewed cans 


. Hyoid plate of Russian Asterolepis 
. Spine of Spinax Acanthias : — fragment of Onondago spine 
. Tail of Spinax Acanthias :— of Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris 
. Port Jackson Shark (Cestracion Pllippi) . 

. Tail of Osteolepis . 3 

. Tail of Lepidosteus osseus. . Bash it ood hae eC 
Ala-of Perch: 57-4 =a aie 

. Altingia excelsa (Norfolk-Island Pine) . 

. Fucoids of the Lower Old Red Sandstone . 

. Two species of Old Red Fucoids 

. Fern (?) of the Lower Old Red Sandstone 

. Lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone . 2 ar: 
. Internal structure of lignite of Lower Old Red Seranaae 


STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS. 


THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 





A W HEN engaged in prosecuting the self 

= xe imposed task of examining in detail 
the various fossiliferous deposits of 
Scotland, in the hope of ultimately 
acquainting myself with them all, I ex- 
SS tended my exploratory ramble, about 
lwo years ago, into the Mainland of Orkney, and resided for 
some time in the vicinity of Stromness. 

This busy seaport town forms that special centre, in this 
northern archipelago, from which the structure of the en- 
tire group can be most advantageously studied. The geol- 
ogy of the Orkneys, like that of Caithness, owes its chief 
interest to the immense development which it exhibits of 
one formation, — the Lower Old Red Sandstone, — and to the 
extraordinary abundance of its vertebrate remains. It is 
not too much to affirm, that in the comparatively small 
portion which this cluster of islands contains of the third 
part of a system regarded only a few years ago as the least 
fossiliferous in the geologic scale, there are more fossil fish 

3 


26 STROMNESS 


enclcsed than in every other geologic system .n England 
Scotland, and Wales, from the Coal Measures to the Chalk 
inclusive. Orkney is emphatically, to the geologist, what a 
juvenile Shetland poetess designates her country, in chal- 
lenging for it a standing independent of the “« Land of Cakes,” 
——a “Land of Fish;” and, were the trade once fairly opene } 
up, could supply with ichthyolites, by the ton and the ship- 
load, the museums of the world. Its various deposits, with 
all their strange organisms, have been uptilted from the bot 
tom against a granitic axis, rather more than six miles in 
length by about a mile in breadth, which forms the great 
back-bone of the western district of Pomona; and on this 
granitic axis — fast jammed in between a steep hill and the 
sea — stands the town of Stromness. Situated thus at the 
bottom of the upturned deposits of the island, it occupies ex- 
actly such a point of observation as that which the curious 
eastern traveller would select, in front of some huge pyra- 
mid or hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, as a proper site for his 
tent. It presents, besides, not a few facilities for studying 
with the geological phenomena, various interesting points in 
physical science of a cognate character. Resting on its 
granitic base, in front of the strangely sculptured pyramid of 
three broad tiers, — red, black, and gray, — which the Old 
Red Sandstone of these islands may be regarded as forming, 
it is but a short half mile from the Great Conglomerate base 
of the formation, and scarcely a quarter of a mile more from 
the older beds of its central flagstone deposit ; while an hour’e 
sail on the one hand opens to the explorer the overlying are- 
naceous deposit of Hoy, and an hour’s walk on the other 
introduces him to the Loch of Stennis, with its curiously 
mixed flora and fauna. But of the Loch of Stennis and its 
productions more anon. ) 


AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS. 27 


The day was far spent when I reached Stromness ; but as 
ihad a fine bright evening still before me, longer by some 
three or four degrees of north latitude than the midsummer 
evenings of the south of Scotland, I set out, hammer in 
hand, to examine the junction of the granite and the Grea. 
Conglomerate, where it has been laid bare by the sea along 
the low promontory which forms the western boundary of 
the harbor. The granite here is a ternary of the usual com: 
ponents, somewhat intermediate in grain and color between 
the granites of Peterhead and Aberdeen ; and the conglom 
erate consists of materials almost exclusively derived from 11, 
— evidence enough of itself, that when this ancient mechan- 
ical deposit was in course of forming, the granite — exactly 
such a compound then as it is now — was one of the surface 
rocks of the locality, and much exposed to disintegrating influ- 
ences. This conglomerate base of the Lower Old Red Sand 
stone of Scotland — which presents, over an area of many 
thousand square miles, such an identity of character, that 
specimens taken from the neighborhood of Lerwick, in Shet- 
land, or of Gamrie, in Banff, can scarce be distinguished 
from specimens detached from the hills which rise over the 
Great Caledonian Valley, or from the cliffs immediately in 
front of the village of Contin—seems to have been formed 
in a vast oceanic basin of primary rock, —a Paleozoic Hud- 
son’s or Baffin’s Bay, — partially surrounded, mayhap, by 
primary continents, swept by numerous streams, rapid and 
headlong, and charged with the broken debris of the inhospi- 
table regions which they drained. The graptolite bearing 
grauwacke of Banffshire seems to have been the only fossil 
‘ferous rock that occurred throughout the entire extent of 
this ancient northern basin; and its few organisms now 
serve to open the sole vista through which the geological ex 


28 STROMNESS 


plorer to the north of the Grampians can catch a glimpse of 
an earlier period of existence than that represented by the 
ichthyolites of the Lower Qld Red Sandstone. 

Very many ages must have passed ere, amid waves 
and currents, the water-worn debris which now forms the 
Great Conglomerate could have accumulated over tracts 
of sea-bottom from ten to fifteen thousand square miles in 
area, to its present depth of from one to four hundred feet. 
At length, however, a thorough change took place; but 
we can only doubtfully speculate regarding its nature or 
cause. The bottom of the Paleozoic basin became greatly 
less exposed. Some protecting circle of coast had been 
thrown up around it; or, what is perhaps more _proba- 
ble, it had sunk to a profounder depth, and the ancient 
shores and streams had receded, through the depression, to 
much greater distances. And, in consequence, the deposi. 
tion of rough sand and rolled pebbles was followed by a 
deposition of mud. Myriads of fish, of forms the most 
ancient and obsolete, congregated on its banks or shel- 
tered in its hollows; generation succeeded generation, mil- 
lions and tens of millions perished mysteriously by sudden 
death ; shoals after shoals were annihilated; but the pro- 
ductive powers of nature were strong, and the waste was 
kept up. But who among men shall reckon the years or 
centuries. during which these races existed, and this muddy 
ocean of the remote past spread out to unknown and nameless 
shores around them? As in those grear cities of the desert 
that he uninhabited and waste, we can but conjecture their 
term of existence from the vast extent of their cemeteries. 
We only know that the dark, finely-grained schists in which 
they so abundantly occur must have been of comparatively 
Slow formation, and that yet the thickness of the deposit 


AND ITS ASTEROLEPYIS. 29 


more than equals the height of our loftiest Scottish moun: 
tains. It would seem as if a period equal to that in which 
all human history is comprised might be cut out of a corner 
of the period represented by the Lower Old Red Sandstone. 
and be scarce missed when away; for every year during 
which man has lived upon earth, it is not improbable that the 
Pterichthys and its contemporaries may have lived a cen- 
tury. Their last hour, however, at length came. Over the 
dark-colored ichthyolitic schists so immensely developed in 
Caithness and Orkney, there occurs a pale-tinted, unfossilif- 
erous sandstone, which in the island of Hoy rises into hills of 
fiom fourteen to sixteen hundred feet in height; and among 
the organisms of those newer formations of the Old Red 
which overlie this deposit, not a species of ichthyolite iden- 
tical with the species entombed in the lower schists has yet 
been detected. In the blank interval which the arenaceous 
deposit represents, tribes and families perished and disap- 
peared, leaving none of their race to succeed them, that other 
tribes and families might be called into being, and fall into 
their vacant places in the onward march of creation. 

Such, so far as the various hieroglyphics of the pile have yet 
rendered th3.: m-zanings to the geologist, is the strange story 
recorded on the three-barred pyramid of Stromnoss. I traced 
the formation upwards this evening along the edges of the 
upturned strata, from where the Great Conglomerate leans 
against the granite, till where it merges into the ichthyolitic 
flagstones ; and then pursued these from older and lower to 
newer and higher layers, desirous of ascertaining at what 
distance over the base of the system its mcre ancient organ- 
‘sms first appear, and what their character and kind. And, 
embedded in a grayish-colored layer of hard flag, somewhat 


less than a hundred yards over the granite, and about a 
a * 


30 STROMNESS 


hundred and sixty feet over the upper stratum of the con- 
glomerate, I found what I sought, —a well-marked bone, — in 
all probability the oldest vertebrate remain yet discovered in 
Orkney What, asks the reader, was the character of this 
ancient organism of the Palzeozoic basin ? 

As shown by its cancellated texture, palpable to the naked 
eye, and still more unequivocally by the irregular complexity 
of fabric which it exhibits under the microscope, — by its 
speck-like life-points or canaliculi, that remind one of air- 
bubbles in ice,—jits branching channels, like minute veins, 
through which the blood must once have flown,— and its 
general groundwork of irregular lines of corpuscular fibre, 
that wind through the whole like currents in a river studded 
with islands,— it was as truly osseous in its composition 
as the solid bones of any of the reptiles of the Secondary, or 
the quadrupeds of the Tertiary periods. And in form it 
closely resembled a large roofing-nail. With this bone our 
more practised paleontologists are but little acquainted, for 
no remains of the animal to which it belonged have yet been 
discovered in Britain to the south of the Grampians,* nor, ex- 
cept nthe Old Red Sandstone of Russia, has it been detected 





* Since the above sentence was written and set in type, I have 
learned that my ingenious friend, Mr. Charles Peach of the Cus- 
toms, Fowey, so well known for his paleontological discoveries, 
has just found in the Devonian system of Cornwall, fragments of 
what seem to be dermal plates of Asterolepis. It is a somewhat 
curious circumstance, that the two farthest removed extremi- 
ties of Great Britain— Cornwall and Caithness — should be tipped 
by fossiliferous deposits of the same ancient system, and that 
organisms which, when they lived, were contemporary, should be 
found embedded in the rocks which rise over the British Channel 
on the one extremity, and overhang the Pentland Frith on the 
other. 


AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS. 31 


any where on the Continent. Nor am | aware tnat, save ir: 
the accompanying wood-cut, (fig. 1,) it has ever been figured. 
The amateur ged ogists of Caithness and Orkney have, how- 
ever, learned to recognize it as the “ petrified nail.” The 
length of the entire specimen in this instance was five 
seven eighth inches, the transverse breadth of the head twe 
inches and a quarter, and the thickness of the stem near, 
three tenth parts of an inch. This nail-like bone forme} 
a characteristic portion of the Asterolepis, —so far as 1s yel 
known, the most gigantic ganoid of the Old Red Sandstone, 
and, judging from the place of this fragment, apparently one 


of the first. 


Fig. 1. 





INTERNAL RIDGE OF HYOID PLATE OF ASTEROLEPIS.* 
(One third the natural size, linear.) 


NY SLE 


* Figured from a Thurso specimen, slightly different in its propor- 
tions from the Stromness specimen described. 


32 STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLETIS. 


There were various considerations which led me to regard 
the ‘“ petrified nail” in this case as one of the most interest 
ing fossils I had ever seen; and, before quitting Orkney, te 
pursue my explorations farther to the south, I brought two in- 
telligent geologists of the district,* to mark its place and 
character, that they-might be able to point it out to geologi- 
eal visitors in the future, or, if they preferred removing it 
to their town museum, to indicate to them the stratum in 
which it had lain. It showed me, among other things, how 
unsafe it is for the geologist to base positive conclusions 
on merely negative data. Founding on the fact that, of } 
many hundred ichthyolites of the Lower Old Red Sand- 
stone which I had disinterred and examined, all were of com- 
paratively small size, while in the Upper Old Red many of 
the ichthyolites are of great mass and bulk, I had inferred 
that vertebrate life had been restricted to minuter forms at 
the commercement than at the close of the system. It 
had begun, I had ventured to state in the earlier editions of a 
little work on the ‘ Old Red Sandstone,” with an age of 
dwarfs, and had ended with an age of giants. And now, 
here, at the very base of the system, unaccompanied by 
aught to establish the contemporary existence of its dwarfs, 
— which appear, however, in an overlying bed about a hun- 
dred feet higher up, — was there unequivocal proof of the ex- 
istence of one of the most colossal of its giants. But no 
unfrequently, in the geologic field, has the practice of basing 
positive conclusions on merely negative grounds led to a mis- 
treading of the record. From evidence of a kind exactly 
similar to that on which I had built, it was inferred, some two 





¢ Dr. George Garson, Stromness, and Mr. William Watt, jun 
Skaill. 


THE LAKE OF STENNIS 83 


or three years ago, that there had lived no reptiles during the 
period of the Coal Measures, and no fish in the times of the 
Lower Silurian System. 

l extended my researches, a few days after, in 1n easterly 
direction from the town of Stromness, and walked for several 
miles along the shores of the Loch of Stennis, —a large lake 
about fourteen miles in circumference, bare and treeless, like 
all the other lakes and lochs of Orkney, but picturesque of 
outline, and divided into an upper and lower sheet of waier 
by two low, long promontories, that jut out from opposite 
sides, and so nearly meet in the middle as to be connected by 
a thread-like line of road, half mound, half bridge. ‘ The 
Loch of Stennis,” says Mr. David Vedder, the sailor-poet of 
Orkney, “ is a beautiful Mediterranean in miniature.” It gives 
admission to the sea by a narrow strait, crossed, like that 
which separates the two promontories in the middle, by a 
long rustic bridge; and, in consequence of this peculiarity, 
the lower division of the lake is salt in its nether reaches 
and brackish in its upper ones, while the higher division 
is merely brackish in its nether reaches, and fresh enough 
in its upper ones to be potable. Viewed from the east, 
in one of the long, clear, sunshiny evenings of the Orkney 
summer, it seems not unworthy the eulogium of Vedder. 
There are moory hills and a few rude cottages in front; and 
mn the background, some eight or ten miles away, the bold, 
steep mountain masses of Hoy; while on the promontories 
of the lake, in the middle distance, conspicuous in the land- 
scape, from the relief furnished by the blue ground of the 
surrounding waters, stand the tall gray obelisks of Stennis 
—one group on the northern promontory, the other on the 


south,— 
‘Old even beyond tradition’s breath.” 


34 THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 


The shores of both the upper and lower divisions of the 
lake were strewed, at the time I passed, by a line of wrack, 
consisting, for the first few miles from where the lower loch 
opens to the sea, of only marine plants, then of marine plants 
mixed with those of fresh-water growth, and then, in the 
upper shzet of water, of lacustrine plants exclusively. And 
the fauna of the loch is, I was informed, of as mixed a char- 
acter as its flora, — the marine and fresh-water animals hav- 
ing each their own reaches, with certain debatable tracts 
between, in which each kind expatiates with more or less 
freedom, according to its specific nature and constitution, — 
some of the sea-fish advancing far on the fresh water, and 
others, among the proper denizens of the lake, encroaching 
far on the salt. The common fresh-water eel strikes out, I 
was told, farthest into the sea-water ; in which, indeed, revers- 
ing the habits of the salmon, it is known in various places 
to deposit its spawn. It seeks, too, impatient of a low tem- 
perature, to escape from the cold of winter, by taking refuge 
in water brackish enough, in a climate such as ours, to resist 
the influence of frost. Of the marine fish, on the other hand, 
I found that the flounder got greatly higher than any of 
the others, inhabiting reaches of the lake almost entirely 
fresh. I have had an opportunity elsewhere of observing a 
curious change which fresh water induces in this fish. In the 
brackish water of an estuary, the animal becomes, without 
diminishing in general size, thicker and more fleshy than when 
in its legitimate habitat, the sea: but the flesh loses in quality 
what it gains in quantity ;— it grows flabby and insipid, and 
the margin-fin lacks always its strip of transparent fat. But 
the change induced in the two floras of the lake — marine and 
lacustrine — is considerably more palpable and obvious than 
that induced in its two faunas. As I passed along the strat 


THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 35 


through which it gives admission to the sea, I found the 
commoner fucoids of our sea-coasts streaming in great luxu- 
riance in the tideway, from the stones and rocks of the bot- 
tom. I marked, among the others, the two species cf kelp- 
weed, so well known to our Scotch kelp-burners, — Fucus 
nodosus and Fucus vesiculosus, — flourishing in their uncur 
ailed proportions; and the not inelegant Halidrys siliquosa, 
or “ tree in the sea,” presenting its amplest spread of pod and 
frond. A little farther in, Halidrys and Fucus nodosus dis- 
appear, and Fucus vesiculosus becomes greatly stunted, and 
no longer exhibits its characteristic double rows of bladders 
But for mile after mile it continues to exist, blent with some 
of the hardier conferve, until at length it becomes as dwarfish 
and nearly as slim of frond as the conferve themselves 

and it is only by tracing it through the intermediate forms 
that we succeed in convincing ourselves that, in the brown 
stunted tufts of from one to three inches in length, which 
continue to frmge the middle reaches of the lake, we have 
in reality the well-known Fucus before us. Rushes, flags, 
and aquatic grasses may now be seen standing in diminutive 
tufts out of the water; and a terrestrial vegetation at least 
continues to exist, though it can scarce be said to thrive, on 
banks covered by the tide at full. The lacustrine flora 
increases, both in extent and luxuriance, as that of the sea 
diminishes; and in the upper reaches we fail to detect all 
trace of marine plants the alge so luxuriant of growth along 
the straits of this “ miniature Mediterranean,” altogether 
cease ; and a semi-aquatic vegetation attains, in turn, to the 
state of fullest development any where permitted by the tem- 
perature of this northern locality. A memoir descriptive of 
the Loch of Stennis, and its productions, animal and vegetable 
such as old Gilbert White of Selborne could have produced 


36 THE LAKE OF STENNIS. 


would be at once a very valuable and curious document, im 
portant to the naturalist. and not without its use to the geologi 
cal student. 

I know not how it may be with others; but the special 
phenomena connected with Orkney that most decidedly bore 
fruit in my mind, and to which my thoughts have most fre- 
quently reverted, were those exhibited in the neighborhood 
of Stromness. I would more particularly refer to the char 
acteristic fragment of Asterolepis, which I detected in its lower 
flagstones, and to the curiously mixed, semi-marine, semi- 
lacustrine vegetation of the Loch of Stennis. Both seem to 
bear very directly on that development hypothesis, — fast 
spreading among an active and ingenious order of minds, 
both in Britain and America, and which has been long known 
on the Continent, — that would fain transfer the work of crea- 
tion from the department of miracle to the province of natural 
law, and would strike down, in the process of removal. all th« 
old landmarks, ethical and religious. 


THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS. 37 


THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS 
CONSEQUENCES. 


Every individual, whatever its. species or order, begins 
and increases until it attains to its state of fullest develop- 
ment, under certain fixed laws, and in consequence of their 
operation. The microscopic monad develops into a feetus, 
the foetus into a child, the child into a man; and, however 
marvellous the process, in none of its stages is there the 
slightest mixture of miracle; from beginning to end, all is 
progressive development, according to a determinate order of 
things. Has Nature, during the vast geologic periods, beer. 
pregnant, in like manner, with the human race? and is the 
species, like the individual, an effect of progressive develop- 
ment, induced and regulated by law? ‘The assertors of the 
revived hypothesis of Maillet and Lamarck reply in the af- 
firmative. Nor, be it remarked, is there positive atheism 
involved in the belief. God might as certainly have origi- 
uated the species by a law of development, as he maintains it 
by a law of development; the existence of a First Great 
Cause is as perfectly compatible with the one scheme as with 
the other; and it may be necessary thus broadly to state the 
fact, not only in justice to the Lamarckians, but also fairly to 
warn tleir non-geological opponents, that in this contest 


the old anti-atheistic arguments, whether founded on -he 
4 


$8 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS. 


evidence of design, or on the preliminary doctrine of final 
causes, cannot be brought to bear. 

There are, however, beliefs, in no degree less importan 
to the moralist or the Christian than even that in the being of 
a God. which seem wholly incompatible with the develop- 
ment hypothesis. If, durmg a period so vast as to be scarce 
expressible by figures, the creatures now human have been 
rising, by almost infinitesimals, from compound microscopic 
cells, — minute vital globules within globules, begot by elec- 
tricity on dead gelatinous matter, — until they have at length 
become the men and women whom we see around us, we must 
hold either the monstrous belief, that all the vitalities, whether 
those of monads or of mites, of fishes or of reptiles, of birds 
or of beasts, are individually and inherently immortal and 
undying, or that human souls are not so. The difference be- 
tween the dying and the undying, — between the spirit of the 
brute that goeth downward, and the spirit of the man that 
goeth upward,—is not a difference infinitesimally, or even 
atomically small. It possesses all the breadth of the eternity 
to come, and is an infinitely great difference. It cannot, if I 
may so express myself, be shaded off by infinitesimals or 
atoms; for it is a difference which — as there can be no class 
of beings intermediate in their nature.between the dying ard the 
undying — admits not of gradation at all. What mind, regu: 
lated by the ordinary principles of human belief, can possibly 
hold that every one of the thousand vital points which swim in 
a drop of stagnant water are inherently fitted to maintain their 
mdividuality throughout eternity ? Or how can it be rationally 
held that a mere progressive step, in itself no greater or more 
important than that effected by the addition of a single brick 
to a house in the building state, or of a single atom to a body 
in the growing state, could ever have produced immortality ? 


AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 39 


And yet, if the spirit of a monad or of a mollusc be not im 
mortal, then must there either have been a point in the his. 
tory of the species at which a dying brute — differing from 
its offspring. merely by an inferiority of development, repre- 
sented by a few atoms, mayhap by a single atom — preducea 
an undying man, or man in his present state must be a mere 
animal, possessed of no immortal soul, and as irresponsible 
for his actions to the God before whose bar he is, in conse- 
quence, never to appear, as his presumed relatives and _pro- 
genitors the beasts that perish. Nor will it do to attempt 
escaping from the difficulty, by alleging that God at some 
certain link in the chain might have converted a mortal crea 
ture into an immortal existence, by breathing into it a ‘ living 
soul ;” seeing that a renunciation of any such direct inter- 
ference on the part of Deity in the work of creation forms 
the prominent and characteristic feature of the scheme, — 
nay, that it constitutes the very nucleus round which the 
scheme has originated. And thus, though the development 
theory be not atheistic, it is at least practically tantamoum 
to atheism. For, if man be a dying creature, restricted in 
his existence to the present scene of things, what does it really 
matter to him, for any one moral purpose, whether there be a 
God or no? If in reality on the same religious level with 
the dog, wolf, and fox, that are by nature atheists, —a nature 
most properly coupled with irresponsibility, — to what one 
practical purpose should he know or believe in a Goa whom 
he, as certainly as they, is never to meet as his Judge? or 
why should ne square his corduct by the requirements of the 
moral code farther than a low and convenient expediency 
may chance to demand ? * 





_— 





* The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are 
greatly more frank than those o our own country regarding th~ 


40 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 


Nor does the purely Christian objection to the developmen! 
hypothesis scem less, but even more insuperable than that 
derived from the province of natural theology. The belief 
which is perhaps of all others most fundamentally essential 
to the revealed scheme of salvation, is the be-ief that “ God 
created man upright,” and that man, instead of proceeding 
onward and upward from this high and fair beginning, to a 
yet higher and fairer standing in the scale of creation, sank 
and became morally lost and degraded. And hence the ne- 
cessity for that second dispensation of recovery and restora- 
tion which forms the entire burden of God’s revealed mes- 
sage to man. If, according to the development theory, the 


EE eee 


«life after death,” and what man has to expect from it. The in- 
dividual, they tell us, perishes forever ; but, then, out of his remains 
there spring up other vitalities. The immortality of the soul is, it 
would seem, an idle figment, for there really exists no such things as 
souls; but is there no comfort in being taught, instead, that we 
are to resolve into monads and maggots? Job solaced himself with 
the assurance that, even after worms had destroyed his body, he was 
in the flesh to see God. Had Professor Oken been one of his com- 
forters, he would have sought to restrict his hopes to the prospect of 
living in the worms. “If the organic fundamental substance constst 
of infusoria,” says the Professor, ‘so must the whole organic world 
originate from infusoria. Plants and animals can only be metamor- 
phoses of infusoria. This being granted, so also must all organiza- 
tions consist of infusoria, and, during their destruction, dissolve into 
the same. Every plant, every animal, is converted by maceration 
into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is stocked 
with infusoria. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division 
of organisms into infusoria,—a reduction of the higher to tLe 
primary life. * * * * Death is no annihilation, but only a 
change. One individual emerges out of another. Death is only a 
transition to another life, — not into death. This transition from one 
life to another takes place through the primary condition of the or 
ganic, or the mucus.’ — Physio- Philosophy, pp. 187-189 


AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 4) 


progress of the “ first Adam” was an upward progress , the 
existence of the ‘second Adam’’—that ‘happier man,’ 
according to Milton, whose special work it is to “ restore” 
and “ regain the blissful seat” of the lapsed race —is simply 
a meaningless anomaly. Christianity, if the development 
theory be true, is exactly what some of the more extreme 
Moderate divines of the last age used to make it——an idle 
and unsightly excrescence on a code of morals that would be 
perfect were it away. 

I may be in error in taking this serious view of the matter , 
and, if so, would feel grateful to the man who could point out 
to me that special link in the chain of inference at which, 
with respect to the bearing of the theory on the two theolo 
gies — natural and revealed — the mistake has taken place 
But if I be in error at all, it is an error into which I find 
not a few of the first men of the age, — represented, as a 
class, by our Professor Sedgwicks and Sir David Brewsters, 
— have also fallen ; and until it be shown to Je an error, ané 
that the development theory is in no degree incompatible 
with a belief in the immortality of the soul — in the responsi- 
bility of man to God as the final Judge — or in the Christian 
scheme of salvation — it is every honest man’s duty to protest 
against any ex parte statement of the question, that would 
insidiously represent it as ethically an indifferent one, or as 
unimportant in its theologic bearing, save to “ little religious 
sects and scientific coteries.” In an address on the fossil 
flora, made in September last by a gentleman of Edinburgh, 
to the St. Andrew’s Horticultural Society, there occurs the 
following passage on this subject: ‘Life is governed by 
external conditions, and new conditions imply new races ; but 
then as to their creation, that is the ‘ mystery of mysteries.’ 


Are they created by an immediate fiat and direct act of the 
4° 


42 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 


Almighty ¢ or has He originally impressed life with an elas- 
ticity and adaptability, so that it shall take upon itself new 
forms and characters, according to the conditions to which it 
shall be subjected ? Each opinion has had, and still has, its 
advocates and opponents ; but the truth is, that sevence, so far 
as it knows, or rather so far as it has had the honesty and 
courage to avow has yet been unable to pronounce a satisfac- 
tory decision. Hither way, it matters little, physically or mor- 
ally, either mode implies the same omnipotence, and wisdom, 
and foresight, and protection ; and it is only your little religious 
sects and scientific coteries which make a pother about the 
matter, — sects and coteries of which it may be justly said, 
that they would almost exclude God from the management 
of his own world, if not managed and directed in the way 
that they would have it.” Now, this is surely a most unfair 
representation of the consequences, ethical and religious 

involved in the development hypothesis. I[t is not its com- 
patibility with belief in the existence of a First Great Cause 
that has to be established, in order to prove it harmless ; but 
its compatibility with certain other all-important beliefs, with 

out which simple Theism is of no moral value whatever —a 
belief in the immortality and responsibility of man, and in, 
the scheme of salvation by a Mediator and Redeemer. Dis- 
sociated from these beliefs, a belief in the existence of a God 
is of as little ethical value as a belief in the existence of the 
great sea-serpent. 

Let us see whether we cannot determine what the testi- 
mony of Geology, on this question of creation by development, 
reaily is. It is always perilous to under-estimate the strength 
of an enemy ; and the danger from the development hypoth- 
esis to an ingenious order of minds, smitten with the novel 
fascinations of physical science, has been under-estimated very 


AND !TS CONSEQUENCES. 43 


considerably inJeed. Save by a few studious men, who to 
the cultivation of Geology and the cognate branches add some 
acquaintance with metaphysical science, the general corre- 
spondence of the line of assault taken up by this new school 
of infidelity, with that occupied by the old, and the conse- 
quent ability of the assailants to bring, not only the recently 
forged, but also the previously employed artillery into full 
play along its front, has not only not been marked, but even 
not so much as suspected. And yet, in order to show that 
there actually is such a correspondence, it can be but neces- 
sary to state, that the great antagonist points in the array of 
the opposite lines, are simply the law of development versus 
the maracle of creation. The evangelistic Churches cannot, 
N consistency with their character, or with a due regard to 
the interests of their people, slight or overlook a form of error 
at once exceedingly plausible and consummately dangerous, 
and which is telling so widely on society, that one can scarce 
travel by railway or in a steamboat, or encounter a group of 
intelligent mechanics, without finding decided trace of its 
ravages. 

But ere the Churches can be prepared competently to 
deal with it, or with the other objections of a similar class 
which the infidelity of an age so largely engaged as the pres- 
ent in physical pursuits will be from time to time originating, 
they must greatly extend their educational walks into the 
field of physical science. The mighty change which has 
taken place during the present century, in the direction in 
which the minds of the first order are operating, though 
indicated on the face of the country in characters which 
cannot be mistaken, seems to have too much escaped the no- 
tice of our theologians. Speculative theology and the meta- 
physics are cognate branches of the same science ; and when, 


44 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 


as in the last and the preceding ages, the higher philosophy of 
the world was metaphysical, the Churches took ready cogni 
zance of the fact, and, in due accordance with the requirements 
of the time, the battle of the Evidences was fought on meta- 
physical ground. But, judging from the preparations made in 
their colleges and halls, they do not now seem sufficiently 
aware — though the low thunder of every railway, and the snort 
of every steam engine, an: the whistle of the wind amid the 
wires of every electric telegraph, serve to publish the fact 
— that it is in the departments of physics, not of metaphys- 
ics, that the greater minds of the age are engaged, — that 
the Lockes, Humes, Kants, Berkeleys, Dugald Stewarts, and 
Thomas Browns, belong to the past, —and that the philoso- 
phers of the present time, tall enough to be seen all the world 
over, are the Humboldts, the Aragos, the Agassizes, the Lie- 
bigs, the Owens, the Herschels, the Bucklands, and the Brew- 
sters. In that educational course through which, in this coun- 
try, candidates for the ministry pass, in preparation for their 
office, | find every group of great minds which has in turn 
influenced and directed the mind of Europe for the last three 
centuries, represented, more or less adequately, save the last. 
It is an epitome of all kinds of learning, with the exception 
of the kind most imperatively required, because most in 
accordance with the genius of the time. The restorers of clas: 
sic literature — the Buchanans and Erasmuses — we see rep- 
resented in our Universities by the Greek and what are termed 
the Humanity courses ; the Galileos, Boyles, and Newtons, by 
the Mathematical and Natural Philosophy courses ; and the 
Lockes, Kants, Humes, and Berkeleys, by the Metaphysical 
course. But the Cuviers, the Huttons, the Cavendishes, and the 
Watts, with their successors, the practical philosophers of the 
present age, — men whose achievements in physical science. 


AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 4h 


we find marked on the surface of the country in characters 
which might be read from the moon, —are not adequately 
represented. It would be perhaps more correct to say, that 
they are not represented at all ;* and the clergy, as a class, 
suffer themselves to linger far in the rear of an intelligent and 
accomplished laity — a full age behind the requirements of 
the time. Let them not shut their eyes to the danger which 
is obviously coming. The battle of the Evidences will have 
as certainly to be fought on the field of physical science, as 
it was contested in the last age on that of the metaphysics 
And on this new arena the combatants will have to employ 
new weapons, which it will be the privilege of the challenger 
to choose. ‘The old, opposed to these, would prove but of 
little avail. In an age of muskets and artillery, the bows and 
arrows of an obsolete school of warfare would be found 
greatly less than sufficient, in the field of battle, for purposes 
either of assault or defence. 

“There are two kinds of generation in the world,” says 
Professor Lorenz Oken, in his ‘* Elements of Physio-philoso- 
phy ;” “the creation proper, and the propagation that is 
sequent thereupon— or the generatio originaria and secun 
daria. Consequently, no organism has been created of larger 
size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor ever has 


* I trust that at least by and by there may be an exception 
claimed, from the general, but, I am sure, well-meant, censsre of 
this passage, in favor of the Free Church of Scotland. It has 
got as its Professor of Physical Science—thanks to the sagacity 
of Chalmers — Dr. John Fleming, a man of European reputation , 
and all that seems further necessary, in order to secure the benefits 
contemplated in the appointment, is, that attendance on his course 
should be rendered imperative on aii Free Church candidates for the 


ministry 


46 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 


one been created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is 
larger has not been created, but developed. Man has not 
been created, but developed.” Such, in a few brief dogmatic 
sentences, is the development theory. What, in order tc 
establish its truth, or even to render it in some degree proba- 
ble, ought to be the geological evidence regarding it? The 
reply seems obvious. In the first place, the earlier fossils 
ought to be very small in size; in the second, very ow in 
organization. In cutting into the stony womb of nature, in 
order to determine what it contained mayhap millions of ages 
ago, we must expect, if the development theory be true, to 
look upon mere embryos and fetuses. And if we find, in- 
stead, the full grown and the mature, then must we hold that 
the testimony of Geology is not only not in accordance with 
the theory, but in positive opposition to it. Such, palpably, is 
the principle on which, in this matter, we ought to decide 
What are the facts ? 

The oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient 
geological system of Scotland in which vertebrate remains 
occur, seems to be the Asterolepis of Stromness. After the 
explorations of many years over a wide area, | have detected 
none other equally low in the system; nor have I| ascertained 
that any brother-explorer in the same field has been more 
fortunate. It is, up to the present time, the most ancient 
Scotch witness of the great class of fishes that can in this case 
be brought into court; nay, it is in all probability the oldest 
ganoid witness the world has yet produced ; for there appears 
no certain trace of this order of fishes in the great Silurian 
system which lies underneath, and in which, so far as geolo- 
gists yet know, organic existence first began. How, then, on 
the two relevant points— bulk and organization — does it 
answer to the demands of the development hypothesis? Was 


AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 47 


it a mere foetus of the finny tribe, of minute size, and imper- 
fect, embryonic faculty? Or was it of at least the ordinary 
bulk, and, for its class, of the average organization? May | 
solicit the forbearance of the non-geological reader, should 
my reply to these apparently simple questions seem unneces- 
sarily prolix and elaborate? Peculiar opportunities of obser- 
vation, and the possession of a set of unique fossils, enable 
me to submit to our paleontologists a certain amount of in- 
formation regarding this ancient ganoid, which they will deem 
at once interesting and new; and the bearing of my state- 
ments on the general argument will, I trust, become apparent 
as I proceed. 


48 RECENT HISTORY 


THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS 


ITS FAMILY. 


it had been long known to the continental naturalists, that 
im certain Russian deposits, very extensively developed, there 
occur in considerable abundance certain animal organisms ; 
but for many years neither their position nor character could 
be satisfactorily determined. By some they were placed too 
high in the scale of organized being; by others too low. 
Kutorga, a writer not very familiarly known in this country, 
lescribed the remains as those of mammals;—the Russian 
rocks contained, he said, bones of quadrupeds, and, in espe- 
cial, the teeth of swine: whereas Lamarck, a better known 
authority, though not invariably a safe one, — for he had 
a trick of dreaming when wide awake, and of calling his 
dreams philosophy, —assigned to them a place among the 
corals. ‘They belonged, -he asserted, as shown by certain 
star-like markings with which they are fretted, to the Poly- 
paria. He even erected for their reception a new genus of © 
Astrea,which he designated, from the little rounded hillock 
which rises in the middle of each star, the. genus Monticu 
laria. It was left to a living naturalist, M. Eichwald, to fix 
their true position zoologically among the class of fishes, and 
to Sir Roderick Murchison to determine their position geologi- 
cally as ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone. 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 49 


Sir Roderick, on his return from his great Russian cam- 
paigns, in which he fared far otherwise than Napoleon, 
and accomplished more, submitted to Agassiz a series of 
fragments of these gigantic Ganoids; and the celebratea 
ichthyologist, who had been introcuced’ little more than a 
twelvemonth before to the Pterichthys of Cromarty, was at 
firs: inclined to regard them as the remains of a large cui- 
rassed fish of the Cephalaspian type, but generically new. 
Under this impression he bestowed upon the yet unknown 
ichthyolite of which they had formed part, the name Che- 
lonichthys, from the resemblance borne by the broken plates 
to those of the carapace and plastron of some of the Che- 
Jonians. At this stage, however, the Russian Old Red 
yielded a set of greatly finer remains than it had previously 
furnished ; and of these casts were transmitted by Profes- 
ser Asmus, of the University of Dorpat, to the British and 
London Geological Museums, and to Agassiz. “I knew not 
at first what to do,” says the ichthyologist, “ with bones 
of so singular a conformation that I could refer them to 
no known type.” Detecting, however, on their exterior 
surfaces the star-like markings which had misled Lamarck, 
and which he had also detected on the lesser fragments sub- 
mitted to him by Sir Roderick, he succeeded in identifying 
both the fragments and bones as remains of the same genus; 
and on ascertaining that M. Eichwald had bestowed upon 
it, from these characteristic sculpturings, the generic name 
Asterolepis, or star-scale, he suffered the name which he 
himself had originated to drop. Even this second neme, 
however, which the ichthyolite still continues to bear, 19 
in some degree founded in error. Its true scales, as I shall 
by and by show, were not stelliferous, but fretted by a pecu- 


liar style of ornament, consisting of waved anas‘omosing 
fh 


50 RECENT HISTORY 


ridges, breaking atop into angular-shaped dots, scooped out 
mternally like the letter V; and were evidently intermedi- 
ate in their character between the scales which cover the 
Glyptolepis and those of the Holoptychius. And the stellate 
markings which M. Eichwald graphically describes as mi- 
nute paps rising out of the middle of star-like wreaths of 
little leaflets, were restricted to the dermal plates of the 
head. 

Agassiz ultimately succeeded in classing the bones which 
had at first so puzzled him, into two divisions — interior and 
dermal; and the latter he divided yet further, though not 
without first lodging a precautionary protest, founded on the 
extreme obscurity of the subject, into cranial and opercular. 
Of the interior bones he specified two,—a_ super-scapular 
bone, (supra-scapulaire,) — that bone which in osseous fishes 
completes the scapular arch or belt, by uniting the scapula to 
the cranium ; and a maxillary or upper jaw-bone. But his 
world-wide acquaintance with existing fishes could lend 
him no assistance in determining the places of the dermal 
bones: they formed the mere fragments of a broken puzzle, 
of which the key was lost. Even in their detached and irre- 
ducible state, however, he succeeded in basing upon them 
several shrewd deductions. He inferred, in the first place, 
that the Asterolepis was not, as had been at first supposed, a 
cuirassed fish, which took its place among the Cephalaspians, 
but a strongly helmed fish of that Coelacanth family to which 
the Holoptychius and Glyptolepis belong ; in the second, that, 
like several of its bulkier cogeners, it was in all probability 
a broad, flat-headed animal; and, in the third, that as its re- 
mains are found associated in the Russian beds with nume- 
rous detached teeth of large size,—the boar-tusks of Ku- 
torga — which present internally that peculiar microscopic 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 53 


character on which Professor Owen has erected his Den- 
drodic or tree-toothed family of fishes, — it would in all like- 
lihood be found that both bones and teeth belonged to the 
same group. ‘It appears more than probable,” he said, 
‘‘ that one day, by the discovery of a head or an entire jaw, 
it will be shown that the genera Dendrodus and Asterolepis 
form but one.” As we proceed, the reader will see how 
justly the ichthyologist assigned to the Asterolepis its place 
among the Ceelacanths, and how entirely his two other con- 
jectures regarding it have been confirmed. ‘TI have had in 
general,” he concluded, ‘‘ but small and mutilated fragments 
of the creature’s bones submitted to me, and of these, even 
the surface ornaments not well preserved; but I hope the 
immense materials with which the Old Red Sandstone of 
Russia has furnished the savans of that country will not be 
lost to science ; and that my labors on this interesting genus, 
incomplete as they are, will excite more and more the atten- 
tion of geologists, by showing, them how ignorant we are of 
all the essential facts concerning the history of the first inhab- 
itants of our globe.” 

I know not what the savans of Russia have been doing for 
the last few years; but mainly through the labors of an 
intelligent tradesman of Thurso, Mr. Robert Dick, — one of 
those working men of Scotland of active curiosity and well- 
developed intellect, that give character and standiag to the 
rest, — | am enabled to justify the classification and confirm 
the conjectures of Agassiz. Mr. Dick, after acquainting him- 
self, in the leisure hours of a laborious profession, with the 
shells, insects, and plants of the northern locality in which 
he resides, had set himself to study its geology; and with 
this view he procured a copy of the little treatise on the Old 
Red Sandstone to which I have already referred, and which 


oz RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 


' was at that time, as Agassiz’s Monograph of the Old Red 
fishes had not yet appeared, the only work specially deveted 
to the palzontology of the system, so largely developed in 
the neighborhood of Thurso. With perhaps a single excep- 
tion, — for the Thurso rocks do not yet seem to have yieided 
a Pterichthys, — he succeeded in finding specimens, in a state 
of better or worse keeping, of all the various ichthyolites which 
I had described as peculiar to the Lower Old Red Sandstone. 
He found, however, what I had not described, — the remains 
of apparently a very gigantic ichthyolite; and, communi- 
cating with me through the medium of a common friend, he 
submitted to me, in the first instance, drawings of his new 
set of fossils; and ultimately, as I could arrive at no sat- 
isfactory conclusion from the drawings, he with great liber- 
ality made over to me the fossils themselves. Agassiz’s 
Monograph was not yet published; nor had I| an opportu- 
nity of examining, until about a twelvemonth after, the 
casts, in the British Museum, of the fossils of Professor 
Asmus. Besides, all the little information, derived from 
various sources, which I had acquired respecting the Rus- 
sian Chelonichthys, — for such was its name at the time, — 
referred it to the cuirassed type, and served but to mislead. 
I was assured, for instance, that Professor Asmus regarded 
his set of remains as portions of the plates and paddles 
of a gigantic Pterichthys, of from twenty to thirty feet in 
length. And so, as I had recognized in the Thurso fossils 
the peculiarities of the Holoptychian (Celacanth) family, | 
at first failed to identify them with the remains of the great 
Russian fish.. All the larger bones sent me by Mr. Dick 
were, I found, cerebral; and the scales associated with 
these indicated, not a cuirass-protected, but a scale-covered 
body and exhibited, in their sculptured and broadly imbri- 


FAMILY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 03 


cated surfaces, the well-marked Ccelacanth style of disposition 
and ornament. But though I could not recognize in either 
bones or scales the remains of one ichthyolite more of the 
Old Red Sandstone, “ that could be regarded as manifesting 
as peculiar a type among fishes as do the Ichthyosauri and 
Plesiosauri among reptiles,” * I was engaged at the time in 
a course of inquiry regarding the cerebral development of 
the earlier vertebrata, that made me deem them scarce less 
interesting than if I could. Ere, however, ! attempt com- 
municating to the reader the result of my researches, I must 
introduce him, in order that he may be able to set out with 
me to the examination of the Asterolepis from the same start- 
ing-point, to the Ceelacanth family, — indisputably one of the 
oldest, and not the least interesting, of its order. 

So far as is yet known, all the fish of the earliest fossilif- 
erous system belonged to the placoid or “ broad plated” order, 
—a great division of-fishes, represented in the existing seas 
by the Sharks and Rays, — animals that to an internal skele- 
ton of cartilage unite a dermal covering of points, plates, or 
spines of enamelled bone, and have their gills fixed. The 
dermal or cuticular bones of this order vary greatly in 
form, according to the species or family : in some cases they 
even vary, according to their place, on the same individual. 
Those button-like tubercles, for instance, with an enamelled 
thorn, bent like a hook, growing out of the centre of each, 
which run down the back and tail, and stud the pectorals of the 
thorn-back, (Raja clavata,) differ very much from the smaller 
thorns, with star-formed bases, which roughen the other parts 
of the creature’s body; and the bony points which mottle 





* Agassiz’s description of the Pterichthys, as quoted by Humboldt, 
in his Cosmos. 
5 * 


54 FAMILY 


the vack and sides of the sharks are, in most of the known 
species, considerably more elongated and prickly than the 
- points which cover their fins, belly, and snout. The extreme 
forms, however, of the shagreen tubercle or plate seem to be 
those of the upright prickle or spine on the one hand, and of 
the slant-laid, rhomboidal, scale-shaped plate on the other. 

The minuter thorns of the ray 


Fig. 2 


(fig. 2, a) exemplify the extreme 
of the prickly type; the fins, ab- 
domen, and anterior part of the 
head of the spotted dog-fish (Scyllz- 
um stellare) are covered by lozenge- 





shaped little plates, which glisten 
with enamel, and are so thickly set 
that they cover the entire surface of 
the skin, (fig. 3, 6,)—-and_ these 
a Shagreen of the Thornback seem equally illustrative of the scale- 

(Raja clavata. ) like form. They are shagreen 
b Shagreen of Sphagodus, — : , : 

a placoid of the Upper POlnts passing into osseous scales, 

Sidurian.* without, however, becoming really 





such ; though they approach them so nearly in the shape and 
disposition of their upper disks, that the true scales, also osse 
ous, of the Acanthodes sulcatus, (fig. 3,a,) a Ganoid of the Coal 
Measures, can scarce be distinguished from them, even when 
microscopically examined. It is only when seen in section 
that the distinctive difference appears. ‘The true scale of the 
Acanthodes, though considerably elevated in the centre, seems 
to have been planted on the skin; whereas the scale-like sha- 
green of the dog-fish is elevated over it on an osseous pedicle o1 
footstalk (fig. 5, a) as a mushroom is elevated over the sward 








* From Murchison’s Silurian System. 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 55 


on its stem; and the base of the stalk Fig. 3. 
is found to resemble in its stellate charac- 
ter that of a shagreen point of the prickly 
type. The apparent scale is, we find, a 





bony prickle bent at right angles a little 

over its base, and flattened into a rhom. 

boidal disk atop. b 
In small fragments of shagreen, (fig. 

2, b,) which have been detected in the 

bone-bed of the Upper Ludlow Rocks, ™ eee wo 


(Upper Silurian,) and constitute the most b. Shagreen of Scyllium 
stellare, (Snout.) 


anci hi 
ncient portions of this substance known (Mavecehtdiameters) 


to the paleontologist, the osseous tuber- 

cles are, as in the minuter spikes of the ray, of the upright 
thorn-like type; they merely serve to show that the pla- 
coids of the first period possesssed, like those of the exist- 
ing seas, an ability of secreting solid bone on their cuticular 
surfaces; and that, though at least such of them as have 
bequeathed to us specimens of their dermal armature pos- 
sessed it in the form farthest removed from that of their im- 
mediate successors the ganoid fishes, they resembled them 
not less in the substance of which their dermoskeletal, than 
in that of which their endoskeletal, parts were composed. 
For the internai skeleton in both orders, during these early 
ages, seems to have been equally cartilaginous, and the cutic- 
ular skeleton equally osseous. In the ictithyolitic formation 
immediately over the Silurians, — that of the Lower Old Red 
Sandstone, — the Ganoids first appear; and the members 
of at least one of the families of the deposit, the Acanths, 
—a family rich in genera and species,— seem to have 
formed connecting links between this second order and 
their placoid predecessors. They were covered with true 


56 


FAMILY 


seales (fig. 4, a,) and their free gills were protected by gill 





a. Scales of Cheiracan- 
thus microlepidotus. 
vo. Shagreen of Spinax 
Acanthias. (Snout.) 
(Mag. eight diameters. ) 


Fig. 5. 


~ 


Cc O?RDP 


te 


a. Section of shagreen of 
Seyllium stellare. 

b. Under surface of do. 

c. Section of scales of 
Cheiracanthus micro- 
lepidotus. 

d. Under surface of do. 

‘Mag. eight diameters.) 


covers; and so they must be regarded 
as real Ganoids_ but as the shagreen 
of the spotted dog-fish nearly ap- 
proaches, in form and character, to ga- 
noid scales, without being really such, 
the scales of this family, on the other 
hand, approached equally near, without 
changing their nature, to the shagreen 
of the Placoids, especially to that of the 
spiked dogfish, (Spinax Acanthias.) 
(Fig.4, b.) We even find on their under 
surfaces what seems to be an approxi- 
mation to the characteristic footstalk. 
They so considerably thicken in the 
middle from their edges inwards, (fig. 
5, c,) as to terminate in their centres 
in obtuse points. With these shagreen- 
like scales, the heads, bodies, and 
fins of all the species of at least twc 
of the Acanth genera,— Chetracan- 
thus and Diplacanthus, — wereas thick- 
ly covered as the heads, bodies, and 
fins of the sharks are with their sha- 
green; and so slight was the degree 
of imbrication, that the portion of eacn 
scale overlaid by the two scales in 
immediate advance of it did not ex- 


ceed the one twelfth part of its entire area. ‘In the scale of 
the Cheiracanthus we find the covered portion indicated by a 
smooth, narrow band, that ran along its anterior edges, and 
which the furrows that fretted the exposed surface did nox 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 59 


averse. It may be added, that both genera had the anterior 


edge of their fins armed with strong spines, —a characteris- 


tic of several of the Placoid families. 


In the Dipterian genera Osteolepis and Diplopterus the scales 


were more unequivocally such 
than in the Acanths, and more 
removed from shagreen. ‘The 
under surface of each was 
traversed longitudinally by a 
raised bar, which attached it 
to the skin, and which, in the 
transverse section, serves to 
remind one of the shagreen 
footstalk. They are, besides, 
of a rhomboidal form; and, 
when seen in the finer speci- 
mens, lying in their proper 
places on what had been once 
the creature’s body, they seem 
merely laid down side by side 
in line, like those rows of 
glazed tiles that pave a cathe. 
dral floor; but on more care- 
ful examination, we find that 
each little tile was deeply 
grooved on its higher side and 
end, (for it lay diagonally in re- 


Fig. 6. 





a. Scales of Osteolepis macrolepido- 
tus. 
b. Scales of an undescribed species of 
Glyptolepis.* 
(The single scales mag. two diame- 
ters ; — the others nat. size.) 


lation to the head,) like the flags of a stone roof, (fig. 6, a,)— 


ee TTT Ph, Eh TAT D Pea 


* These scales, which occur in a detached state, in a stratified clay 
of the Old Red Sandstone, near Cromarty, present for their size ¢ 
larger extent of cover than the scales of any other Ganoid. 


58 FAMILY 


that its fateral and anterio. neighbors impinged upon it along 
these grooves to the extent of about one third its area, — and 
that it impinged, in turn, to the same extent on the scales that 
bordered on it posteriorly and latero-posteriorly. Now, in 
the Celacanth family, (and on this special point the foregoing 
remarks are intended to bear,) the scales, which were gen- 
erally of a round or irregularly oval form, (fig. 6, 6,) over- 
lapped each other to as great an extent as in any of the exist- 
ing fishes of the Cycloid or Ctenoid orders, — to as great an 
extent, for instance, as in the carp, salmon, or herring. Ina 
slated roof there is no part on which the slates do not lie 
double, and along the lower edge of each tier they lie triple ; 
— there is more of slate covered than of slate seen: where- 
as in a tile-roof, the covered portion is restricted to a small 
strip running along the top and one of the edges of each tile, 
and the tiles do not lie double in more than the same degree in 
which the slates lie triple. ‘The scaly cover of the two gen- 
era of Dipterians to which I have referred was a cover on the 
tile-roof principle ; and this is an exceedingly common char- 
acteristic of the scales of the Ganoids. The scaly cover of the 
Ccelacanths, on the other hand, was a cover on the slate-roof 
principle ; — there was in some of their genera about one third 
more of each scale covered than exposed ; and this is so rare 
a ganoidal mode of arrangement, that, with the exception of 
the Diplerus,—a genus which, though it gives its name te 
the Dipterian sept, differed greatly from every other Dip- 
terian, — I know not, beyond the limits of the ancient Ceel- 
acanth family, a single Ganoid that possessed it. The bony 
covering of the Ccelacanths was farthest removed in character 
from shagreen, as that of their contemporaries the Acanths 
approximated to it most nearly; they were, in this respect, 
he two extremes of their order; and, did we find the 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 59 


Coelacanths in but the later geological formations, while the 
Acanths were restricted to the earlier, it might be argued 
by assertors of the development hypothesis, that the amply 
imbricated, slate-like scale of the latter had been developed 
in the lapse of ages from the shagreen tubercle, by passing 
in its downward course — broadening and expanding as it 
descended — through the minute. scarcely imbricated disks 
of the Acanths, and the more amply imbricated tile-like 
rhombs of the Dipterians and Paleonisci, until it had reached 
its full extent of imbrication in the familiar modern type 
exemplified in both the Ceelacanths and the ordinary fishes. 
But such is not the order which nature has observed ; — the 
two extremes of the ganoid scale appear together in the same 
early formation : both become extinct at a period geologically 
remote ; and the ganoid scales of the existing state of things 
which most nearly resemble those of ancient time are scales 
formed on the intermediate or tile-roof principle. 

The scales of the Coelacanths were, in almost all the 
genera which compose the family, of great size ; in some 
species, of the greatest size to which this kind of integu 
ment ever attained. Of aCcelacanth of the Coal Measures, 
the Holoptychius Hibberti, the scales in the larger speci- 
mens were occasionally from five to six inches in diame- 
ter. Even in the Holoptychius nobilissimus, in an individua, 
scarcely exceeding two and a half feet in length, they meas 
ured from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters 
each way. In the splendid specimen of this last species, in 
the British Museum, there occur but fourteen scales between 
the ventrals, though these lie low on the creature’s body, 
and the head; and in a specimen of a smaller species, — the 
Holoptychius Andersoni, — but about seventeen. The exposed 
portion of the scale was in most species of the family curious 


60 FAMILY 


ty fretted by intermingled ridges and furrows, pits and tuber 
cles, which were either boldly relieved, as in the Holoptychius, 
or existed, as in he Glyptolepis, as slim, delicately chiselled 
threads, lines, and dots. The head was covered by strong 
plates, which were roughened with tubercles either confluent 
or detached, or hollowed, as in the Bothriolepis, into shal- 
low pits. The jaws were thickly set with an outer range of 
true fish teeth, and more thinly with an inner range of whai 
seem reptile teeth, that stood up, tall and bulky, behind the 
others, like officers on horseback seen over the heads of their 
foot-soldiers in front. The double fins, — pectorals and ven- 
trals, — were characterized each by a thick, angular, scale- 
covered centre, fringed by the rays; and they must have 
borne externally somewhat the form of the sweeping paddles 
of the Ichthyosaurian genus,—a_ peculiarity shared also by 
-he double fins of the Dipterus. The single fins, in all the 
members of the family of which specimens have been found 
sufficiently entire to indicate the fact, were four in number,— 
an anal, a caudal, and two dorsal fins; and, with the excep- 
tion of the anterior dorsal, which was comparatively small, 
and bent downwards along the back, as if its rays had been 
distorted when young,* they were all of large size. They 
crowded thickly on the posterior portion of the body, — the 
anterior dorsal opposite the ventrals, and the posterion dorsal 
opposite the anal fin. The fin-rays of the various members 
of the family, and such of their spinous processes as have 
been detecte1, were hollow tubular bones; or rather, like the 
larger pieces in the framework of the Placoids, they were 
artilaginous within, and covered externally by a thin osseous 





* A peculiarity which also occurs in the anterior dorsal of the 
Dipterus, 


OF THE ASTEROLEPYS. ol 


crust or shell, which alone survives; and to this peculiarity 
they owe their family name, Ceelacanth, or ‘“ hollow-spine.” 
The internal hollow, 7. e. cartilaginous centre, was, however, 
equally a characteristic of the spinous processes of the Coe- 
costeus. in their general proportions, the Ccelacanths, if we 
perhaps except one species, — the Glyptolepis microlepidotus, 
—were all squat, robust, strongly-built fishes, of the Dirk 
Hatterick or Balfour-of-Burley type; and not oply in the 
larger specimens gigantic in their proportions, but remarkable 
for the strength and weight of their armor, even when of but 
moderate stature. The specimen of Holoptychius nobilissi 
mus in the British Museum could have measured little more 
than three feet from snout to tail when most entire; but it 
must have been nearly a foot in breadth, and a bullet would 
have rebounded flattened from its scales. And such was that 
ancient Ceelacanth family, of which the oldest of our Scotch 
Ganoids,— the Asterolepis of Stromness,— formed one of 
the members, and which for untold ages has had no living 
representative. 

Let us now enter on our proposed inquiry regarding the 
cerebral development of the earlier vertebrata, and see 
whether we cannot ascertain after what manner the first true 
brains were lodged, and what those modifications were which 
their protecting box, the cranium, received in the subsequen; 
periods. Irdependently of its own special interest, the 
inquiry will be found to have a Jirect bearing on our general 


subject. 
6 


62 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLIER 
VERTEBRATA. 


ITS APPARENT PRINCIPLE. 





Iv is held by aclass of naturalists, some of them of the high. 
est standing, that the skulls of the vertebrata consist, like the 
columns to which they are attached, of vertebral joints, com- 
posed each, in the more typical forms of head, as they are in 
the trunk, of five parts or elements, — the centrum or body 
the two spinous processes which enclose the spinal cord, and ~ 
the two ribs. ‘These cranial vertebre, four in number, cor- 
respond, it is said, to the four senses that have their sea* 
‘n the head: there is the nasal vertebra, the centrum of which 
is the vomer, its spinal processes the nasal and ethmoid 
bones, and its ribs the upper jaws; there is the ocular ver- 
tebra, the centrum of which is the anterior portion of the 
sphenoid bone, its spinal processes the frontals, and its 
ribs the under jaws; there is the lingual vertebra, the cen- 
trum of which is the posterior sphenoid bone, its spmal pro- 
cesses the parietals, and its ribs the hyoid and branchia- 
bones, — portions of the skeleton largely developed in fishes ; 
and, lastly, there is the auditory vertebra, the centrum of 
which is the base of the occipital bone, and its spinal pro- 
cesses the occipital crest, and which in the osseous fishes 
beats attached to it, as its ribs, the bones of the scapular 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 63 


rng. Aud the cerebral segments thus constructed we find 
represented in typical diagrams of the skull, as real verte- 
bree. Professor Owen, in his lately published treatise on 
“The Nature of Limbs,” —a work charged with valuable 
fact, and instinct with philosophy, — figures in his draught of 
the archetypal skeleton of the vertebrata, the four vertebra 
of the head, in a form as unequivocally such as any of the 
vertebre of the neck or body. . 
Now, for certain purposes of generalization, I doubt not 
that the conception may have its value. There are in all 
nature and in all philosophy certain central ideas of general 
bearing, round which, at distances less or more remote, the 
subordinate and particular ideas arrange themselves, 


“Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.” — 


In the classifications of the naturalist, for instance, all speczes 
range round some central generic idea ; alf genera round some 
central idea, to which we give-the name of order; all ordeis 
round some central idea of class; all classes round some 
central idea of division ; and all divisions round the interior 
central idea which constitutes a kingdom. Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds forms his theory of beauty on this principle of central 
ideas. ‘* Every species of the animal, as well as of the vege- 
table creation,” he remarks, “‘ may be said to have a fixed or 
determinate form, towards which nature is continually inclin- 
ing, like various lines terminating in a centre ; or it may be 
compared to pendulums vibrating in different directions over 
one central point, which they all cross, though only one of 
their number passes through any other point.” He in- 
stances, in illustrating his theory, the Grecian beau deal 
of the human nose, as seen in the statues of the Greek dei- 
ties It formed a straight line; whereas all deformity of 


64 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


nose is of a convex or concave character, and occasioned by 
either a rising above or a sinking below this medial [ne or 
beauty. And it may be of use, as it Is unquestionably of in 
terest, to conceive, after this manner, of a certain type of 
skeleton, embodying, as it were, the central or primary type 
of al, vertebral skeletons, and consisting of a double range 
of rings, united by the bodies of the vertebra, as the twc 
rings of a figure 8 are united at their point of junction; the 
upper ring forming the enclosure of the brain, — spinal, and 
cephalic ; the lower that of the viscera, — respiratory, circu- 
latory, and digestive. Such is the idea embodied in Professor 
Owen’s archetypal skeleton. It is a series of vertebra 
composing double rings,— their drain-rings comparatively 
small in the vertebre of the trunk, but of much greater size 
in the vertebra: of the head. But it must not be forgotten, that 
central ideas, however necessary to the classification of the 
naturalist, are not historic facts. We may safely hold. 
with the philosophic painter, that the outline of the typi- 
cal human nose is a straight line ; but it would be very un- 
safe to hold, as a consequence, that the first men had all 
straight noses. And when we find it urged by at least one 
eminent assertor of the development hypothesis, — Professor 
Oken, — that light was the main agent in developing the sub- 
stance of nerve, —that the nerves, ranged in pairs, in turn 
developed the vertebra, each vertebra being but “ the peri- 
phery or envelope of a pair of nerves,” —and that the 
nerves of those four senses of smell, sight, taste, and hearing, 
which, according to the Professor, ‘* make up the head,” origi- 
nated the four cranial vertebree which constitute the skull, —- 
it becomes us to test the central idea, thus converted intc 
a sort of historic myth, by the ~ealities of actual history 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 64 


What, then, let us inquire, is the real history of the cerebral 
developmen: of the vertebrata,as recorded in the rocks of the 
earlier geologic periods ? 

Though the vertebrata existed in the ichthyic form through- 
out the vastly extended Silurian period, we find in that system 
no remains of the cranium: the Silurian fishes seem, as has 
been already said, (page 53,) to have been exclusively Pla- 
coid, and the purely cartilaginous box formed by nature for 
the protection of the brain in this order has in no case been 
preserved. ‘Teeth, and. in at least one or two instances, the 
minute jaws over which they were planted have been found, 
but no portion of the skull. We know, however, that in the 
fishes of the same order which now exist, the cranium con- 
sists of one undivided piece of a cartilaginous substance, set 
thickly over its outer surface with minute polygonal points of 
done, (fig. 7,) composed internally of Fig. 7. 
star-like rays, that radiate from the 
centre of ossification, and that pre- 
sent, in consequence, seen through a 
microscope, the appearance of the 





polygonal cells of a coral of the genus 
Astrea. The pattern induced is that Qgseous points of acon 
of stars set within polygons. Along cranium.* 

the sides or top of this unbroken Se canes SS tel 
cranial box, that exhibits no mark of suture, we find the 
perforations through which the nerves of smell, sight, taste, 
and hearing passed from the brain outwards, and see that they 
have failed to originate distinct vertebral envelopes for them 
selves ;— they all lodge in one undivided mansion-house, 


and have merely separate doors. We find, further, that the 


* From the head of Raya clavata. 
* 


56 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


homotypal ribs of the entire cranium consist, not of four, bul 
simply of a single pair, attached to the occiput, and which 
serves both to suspend the jaws, upper and nether, in their 
place under the middle of the head, and to lend support to 
the hyoid and branchial framework ; while the scapular ring 
we find existing, as in the higher vertebrata, not as a cere- 
bral, but es a cervical or dorsal appendage. In the wide 
range of the animal kingdom there are scarce any twe 
pieces of organization that less resemble one another in 
form than the vertebrz of the placoids resemble their skulls ; 
and the difference is not merely external, but extends ta 
even their internal construction. In both skull and vertebre 
we detect an union of bone and cartilage; but the bone of 
each vertebra forms an internal continuous nucleus, round 
which the cartilage is arranged, whereas in the skulls it 
is the cartilage that is internal, and the bone is spread in 
granular points over it. If we dip the body of one of the 
dorsal vertebrae of a herring into melted wax, and then with- 
draw it, we will find it to represent in its crusted state the ver- 
tebral centrum of a Placoid, — soft without, and osseous with- 
in ; but in order to represent the placoid skull, we would have 
first to mould it out of one unbroken piece of wax, and then 
to cover it over with a priming of bone-dust. And such 1s 
the effect of this arrangement, that, while the skull of a 
Placoid, exposed to a red heat, falls into dust, from tne cir- 
cumstance that the supporting framework on wnich tne gran- 
ular bone was arranged perishes in the fire, the vertebral 
centrum, whose internal framework is itself bone, and so not 
perishable, comes out in a state of beautiful entireness, — re- 
sembling in the thornback a squat sand-glass, elegantly fenced 
round by the lateral pillars, (fig. 8, 4 ;) and in the dog-fish (a) 
a more elongated sand-glass, in which the lateral pillars are 


\ 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 61 


wanting. Such are the heads and ver- 
tebral joints of the existing Placoids ; 
and such, reasoning from analogy, seem 





to have been the character and construc- 
tion of the heads and vertebral joints a b 

of the Placoids of the Silurian period, -— a. Osseous centrum cf 
Spinax Acanthias 


: : ; b. Osseous centrum of 
The most ancient brain-bearing cra- = Raja clavata. 


earliest-born of the Vertebrata. 


niums that have come down to us in (Nat. size.) 

the fossil state, are those of the Ganoids 

of the Lower Old Red Sandstone; and in these fishes the 
true skull appears to have been as entirely a simple carti 
lagious box, as that of the Placoids of either the Silurian 
period or of the present time, or of those existing Ganoids, 
the sturgeons. In the Lower Old Red genera Chetracanthus 
and Diplacanthus, though the heads are frequently preserved 
as amorphous masses of colored matter, we detect no trace 
of internal bone, save perhaps in the gill-covers of the first- 
named genus, which were fringed by from eighteen to twenty 
minute osseous rays. The cranium seems to have been cov- 
ered, as in the shark family, by skin, and the skin by minute 
shagreen-like scales; and all of the interior cerebral frame- 
work which appears underneath exists simply as faint impres- 
sions of an undivided body, covered by what seem to be osseous ~ 
points, — the bony molecules, it is probable, which encrusted 
the cartilage. The jaws, in the better specimens, are also 
preserved in the same doubtful style , and this state of keep- 
ing is the common one in deposits in which every true bone, 
however delicate, presents an outline as sharp as when it oc- 
cupied its place in the living animal. The dermal or skin- 
skeleton of both genera, which consisted, as has been shown 
(pages 55 56) of shagreen-like osseous scales and slender 


68 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


srines_ both brilliantly enamelled, is preserved entire; where 
as the interior framework of the head exists as mere point 
speckled impressions ; and the inference appears unavoidable 
that parts which so invariably differ in their state of keeping 
now, must have essentially differed in their substance originally. 

Now, in the Cheiracanthus we detect the first faint indica- 
tions of a peculiar arrangement of the dermal skeleton, in re- 
lation to certain parts of the skeleton within, which — greatly 
more developed in some of its contemporaries — led to im- 
portant results in the general structure of these Ganoids, and 
furnishes the true key to the character of the early ganoid 
head. In such of the existing Placoids as I have had an op- 
portunity of ‘examining, the only portions of the dermal skel- 
eton of bone which conform in their arrangement to portions 
of the interior skeleton of cartilage, are the teeth, which are 
always laid on a base of skin right over the jaws: there is 
also an approximation to arrangement of a corresponding 
kind, though a distant one, in those hook-armed tubercles of 
certain species of rays which run along the vertebral column ; 
but in the shagreen by which the creatures are covered I have 
been able to detect no such arrangement. Whether it occurs 
on the fins, the body, or the head, or in the scale form, or 
in that of the prickle, it manifests the same careless irregu- 
larity. And on the head and body of the Cheiracanthus, and 
on all its fins save one, the shagreen-like scales, though 
laid down more symmetrically in lines than true shagreen, 
manifested an equal absence of arrangement in relation 
to the framework within. On that one fin, however, — the 
caudal, —the scales, passing from their ordinary rhomboid- 
al to a more rectangular form, ranged themselves in right 
lines over the internal rays, (fig. 9, a,) and imparted to these 
such strength as a splint of wood or whalebone fastened over 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 69 


a fractured toe or finger imparts to the in- 
jured digit, —a provision which was probably 
rendered necessary in the case of this im- 
portant organ of motion, from the circum- 
stance that it was the only fin which the 
creature possessed that was not strengthened 
and protected anteriorly by a strong spine. 
In the Cheirolepis,—a contemporary fish, 
characterized, like its cogeners the Cheiracan- 
thus and Diplacanthus, by shagreen-like scales, 
but in which the spines were wanting,— we 
find a farther development of the provision. 
In all the fins the richly-enamelled dermal-. 
covering was arranged in lines over the rays, 





(fig. 9, b;) and the scale, which assumes in 
the fins, like the scales on the tail of the 4 Porton of cat 


Cheiracanthus, though somewhat more irregu- CLE. miei 
. ° acanthus. 
larly, a rectangular shape, is so considerably 4 portion of cam 


elongated, that it assumes for its normal cha- dal fin of Cheir- 
olems Cummin 
Pek ge. 

ternal ray. A similar arrangement of exter- (Mag. three diam- 


racter as a scale, that of the joint of an ex- 


nal protection takes place in this genus over eters.) 

the bones of the head; the cartilaginous jaws receive their 
osseous dermal covering, and, with these, the hyoid bones, 
the opercules, and the cranium. And it is in these dermal 
p-ates, which covered an interior skull, of which, save 
in-one genus, — the Dipterus, — not a vestige remains in any 
of the Old Red fishes thus protected, that we first trace what 





* The darker, upper patch in this figure indicates a portion in 
which the scales of the fins in the fossil still retain their enamel ; 
— the lighter, a portion from which the enamel has disappeared. 


70 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


seem o be the homologues of the cranial bones of the osse 
ous fishes, —at least their homologues so far as the cuticular 
ean represent the internal. They appear for the first time, 
not as modified spinous processes, broadened, as in the cara- 
pace of the Chelonians, into osseous plates, but like those 
corneous external plates of this order of reptiles, (known 
in one species as the tortoise-shell of commerce,) the origin 
of which is purely cuticular, and which evince so little cor- 
respondence in their divisions with the sutures of the bones 
on which they rest, that they have been instanced, in their 
relation to the joinings beneath, as admirable illustrations of 
the cross-banding of the mechanician. 

In the heads of the osseous fishes, the cranium proper, 
though consisting, like the skulls of birds, reptiles, and mam- 
mals, of several bones, exists from snout to nape, and from 
mastoid to mastoid, as one unbroken box; whereas all the 
other bones of the head, such as the maxillaries and inter- 
maxillaries, the lower jaws, the opercular appendages, the 
branchial arches, and the branchiostegous rays, are connect- 
ed but by muscle and ligament, and fall apart under the pu- 
trefactive influences, or in the process of boiling. This un- 
broken box, which consists, in the cod, of twenty-five bones 
is the homologue of that cranial box of the Placoids which 
consists of one entire piece, and the homotype, according to 
Oken, of the bodies and spinal processes of four vertebre 
while the looser bones which drop away represent their ribs. — 
The upper surface of the box, —that extending from the nasal 
bone to the nape,—is the only part over which a dermal 
puckler could be laid, as it is the only part with which the ex- 
ternal skin comes in contact; and so it is between this upper 
surface and the cranial bucklers of the earlier Gancids that we 
have to institute comparisons. For it is a curious fact, that 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 73 


with the exception of the Old Red genera Acanthodus, Cheir- 
acanthus, and Diplacanthus,* all the Ganoids of the period in 
which Ganoids first appear have dermal bucklers placed right 
over their true skulls, and that these, though as united in their 
parts as the bones proper td the cranium in quadrupeds and 
fishes, are composed of several pieces, furnished each with its 
independent centre of ossification. ‘The Dipterians, the Coela- 
canths, the Cephalaspians, and at least one genus placed 
rather doubtfully among the Acanths, — the genus Chetrolepis, 
—all possessed cranial bucklers extending from the nape to 
the snout, in which the plates, various, in the several genera, 
in form and position, were fast soldered together, though in 
every instance the lines of suture were distinctly marked. 

On each side of this external cranium the various cerebral 
plates, like the corresponding cerebral ribs in the osseous 
fishes, were free, at least not anchylosed together ; and some 
of their number unequivocally performed, in part at least, 
the functions of two of these cerebral ribs, viz. the upper 
and under jaws, with the functions of the opercular appen- 
dages attached to the latter. In the cod, as in most other 
osseous fishes, the upper portion of the cranium consists of 
thirteen bones, which represent, however, only seven bones 
in the human skull, — the nasal, the frontal, the two parie- 
tal, the occip:tal, and one-half the two temporal bones. And 
whereas in man, and in most of the mammals, there are four 
of these placed in the medial line, — the four which, accord- 
ing to the assertors of tne vertebral theory, form the spina! 
crests of the four cerebral vertebrae, — in the cod there are but 





* The Acanths of the Coal Measures possess the cranial buck- 
ler, 


72 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


three. The supe:-occipital bone, A, (fig. 10,) pieces on to the 
superior frontal, C, C, C; and the parietals, B, B, which m 





UPPER SURFACE OCF CRANIUM OF CUD.® 


A, Occipital bone. F, F, Posterior frontals. 
B, B, Parietals. E, E, Mastotd bones. 

C, C, C, Superior frontal. 2, 2, Eye orbits. 

{, Nasal bone. a, a, Par-occipital bones. 


D, D, Anterior frontal. 





* Professor Owen, in fixing the homologies of the ichthyic head, 
differs considerably from Cuvier; but his view seems to be de- 
monstrably the correct one. It will, however, be seen, that in 
my attempted comparison of the divisions of the ancient ganoid 
cranium with those of the craniums of existing fishes, the points 
at issue between the two great naturalists are not involved, other- 
wise than as mere questions of words. The matter to be deter: 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. le 


the human subject from the upper and middle portions of 
the cranial vault, are thrust out laterally and posteriorly, and 
take their places, in a subordinate capacity, on each side 
of the super-occipital. This is not an invariable arrange- 
ment among fishes ;—— in the carp genus, for instance, the pa- 
rietals assume their proper medial place between the occipital 
and frontai bones; but so very general is the displacement, 
that Professor Owen regards it as characteristic of the great 
ichthyic class, and as the first example in the vertebrata, 
reckoning from the lower forms upwards, of a sort of nat- 
ural dislocation among the bones,— “a modification,” he 
remarks, ‘‘ which, sometimes accompanied by great change 
of place, has tended most to obscure the essential nature of 
parts, and their true relations to the archetype.” 

Of all the cerebral bucklers of the first ganoid period, tha‘ 
which best bears comparison with the cranial front of the cod 
is the buckler of the Coccosteus, (fig. 11.) The general pro 
portions of this portion of the ancient Cephalaspian head 
differ very considerably from those of the corresponding part 
in the modern cycloid one ; but in their larger divisions, the 
modern and the ancient answer bone to bone. Three 
osseous plates in the Coccosteus, A, C, I, the homologues, 
apparently, of the occipital, frontal, and nasal bones, 
range along the medial line. The apparent homologues of 


mined, for instance, is not whether plate A in the skulls of the cod 
and Coccosteus be the homologue of a part of the occipital or that 
of a part of the parietal bones, but whether plate A in the Coccos- 
teus be the homologue of plate Ain the cod. The letters employed 
I have borrowed from Agassiz’s restoration of the Coccosteus ; wheres 
as the figures intimate divisions which the imperfect keeping of the 
specimens on which the ichthyologist founded did not enable him to 
detect. 
7 


74 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


Fig. 11. 





CRANIAL BUCKLER OF COCCOSTEUS DECIPIENS. 


a, 2, Points of attachment to the cuirass which covered the upper 
part of the creature’s body. 


the parietals, B, B, occupy the same position of lateral dis- 
placement as the parietals of the cod and of so many other 
fishes. The posterior frontals, FP, and the anterior frontals, 
D, also occupy places relatively the same, though the latter, 
which are of greater proportional size, encroach much fur- 
ther, laterally and posteriorly, on the superior frontal C, C, C, 
and sweep entirely round the upper half of the eye orbits, 2, 2. 
The apparent homologue of the mastoid bone, E which also 
occupies its proper place, joins posteriorly to a little plate, a, 
imperfectly separated in most specimens from the parietal, 
but which seems to represent the par-occipital bone ; and it is 
a curious circumstance, that as, in many of the osseous fishes, 
it is to these bones that the forks of the scapular arch 
are attached, they unite in the Coccosteus in furnishing 
in like manner, a point of. attachment to the cuirass which 
covered the upper part of the creature’s body. Of the true 
internal skull of the Coccosteus there remains not a vestige 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 25 


Like that of the sturgeon, it must have been a perishable 
cartilaginous box. 

In the Osteolepis, — an animal the whole of whose externa! 
head I have, at an expense of some labor, and from the ex: 
amination of many specimens, been enabled to restore, — 
the cranial buckler (fig. 12) was divided ‘n a more arbitrary 


Fig. 12. 






iN 
a Hy wale Joa 


ral i ‘) \) 
Vy 







CRANIAL BUCKLER OF OSTEOLEPIS. 


style ; and we find that an element of uncertainty mingtes 
with our inferences regarding it, from the circumstance that 
some of its lines of division, especially in the frontal half, 
were not real sutures, but formed merely a kind of surface- 
tatocing, resorted to as if for purposes of ornament. The 
cranial buckler of the Asterolepis exhibited, as I shall after- 
wards have occasion to show, a similar peculiarity ; — both 
had their pseudo-sutures, resembling ‘those false joints intro- 
duced by the architect into his rustice ted basements, in order 
to impart the necessary aspect of re zularity to what is techni- 


76 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


cally termed the coursing and banding of the fabric. Wecan 
however, determine, notwithstanding the induced obscur.ty 
that the buckler of the Osteolepis was divided transversely in 
the middle into two main parts or segments, — an occipita’ 
part, C, and a frontal part, A; and that the occipital segment 
seems to include also the parietal and mastoid plates, and the 
fror al segment to comprise, with its own proper plates, not 
only the nasal plate, but also the representative of the ante. 7 
rior part of the vomer. All, however, is obscure. But in 
our uncertainty regarding the homologies of the divisions of 
this dermal buckler, let us not forget the homology of the 
buckler itself, as a whole, with the upper surface of the 
true cranium in the osseous fishes. Though frequently crushed 
and broken, it exists in all the finer specimens of my collec 
tion as a symmetrically arranged coliocation of enamelled 
plates, as firmly united into one piece, though they all indi- 
cate their distinct centres of ossification, as the correspond- 
ing surface of the cranium in the carp or cod. The lateral 
curves in the frontal part immediately opposite the lozenge- 
shaped plate in the centre, show the position of the eyes, 
which were placed in this genus, as in some of the carniv- 
orous turtl »s, immediately over the mouth, — an arrangement 
common to almost all the Ganoids of the Lower Old Red 
Sanastone. The nearly semicircular termination of the 
buckler formed the creature’s snout; and in the Osteolepis, as 
in the Glyptolepis and the Diplopterus, it was armed on the 
under side, like the vomer of so many of the osseous fishes, 
with sharp teeth. Some of my specimens indicate the nasal 
openings a little in advance of the eyes. The nape of the 
creature was covered by three detached plates, (9, 9, 9, fig. 
13,) which rested upon anterior dorsal scales, and whose 
homologues, in the osseous fishes, may possibly be found in 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. ee | 





UPPER PART OF HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS. 


those bones which, uniting the shoulder-bones to the head, 
somplete the scapular belt or ring. The operculum we find 
represented by a single plate (8) which had attached to 
it, as its sub-operculum, a plate (18) of nearly equal size, 
(see figs. 14 and 15.) Four small plates (2, 4,5) formed 
the under curve of the eyes, described in many of the osse- 
ous fishes by a chain of small bones or ossicles; a consider- 
ably larger plate (6) occupied the place of the preopercular 
bone; while the intermaxillaries had their representatives in 
well-marked plates, (3, 3,) which, in the genera Osteolepis, 
Diplopterus, and Glyptolepis, we find bristling so thickly with 
teeth along their lower edges, as to remind us of the minia- 
ture saws employed by the joiner in cutting out circular holes. 
These external intermaxillaries did not, as in the perch or cod, 
meet in front of the nasal bone and vomer, but joined on at 
the side, a little in advance of the eyes, leaving the rounded 
termination of the cranial buckler, which, like the intermaxil- 
_laries, was thickly fringed with teeth, to form, as has been 


already said the creature’s snout. 
I % 


78 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


The under jaws (10) —strongly-marked bones in at leasi 
all the Dipterian and Coelacanth genera — we find represented 
externally by massy plates, bearing, like those of the upper 
jaw, their range of teeth. As shown in a well-preserved 
specimen of the lower jaw of Holoptychius, in my possession, 
they were boxes of bone enclosing a bulky nucleus of car- 
tilage, which, in approaching towards the condyloid process, 
where great strength was necessary, was thickly traversed by 
osseous cancelli, and passed at the joint into true bone. It is 
in the under jaws of the earlier Ganoids that we first detect 
a true union of the external with the internal skeleton, — of 
the bony plates and teeth, which were mere plates and teeth of 
the skin, with the osseous, granular walls which enclosed at 
least all the larger pieces of the cartilaginous framework of 
the interior. The jaws of the Rays and Sharks, formed of 
cartilage, and fenced round on their sides and edges by their 
thin coverings of polygonal, bony points, are wholly inter 
nal and skin-covered; whereas the teeth, which rest on 
the soft cuticular integument right over them, are as purely 
dermal as the surrounding shagreen. Teeth and shagreen 
may, we find, be alike stripped off with the skin. Now, in 
the earlier ganoidal jaw, two sides of the osseous box which 
it composed, —its outer and .under sides, — were mere 
dermal plates, representative of the skin of the placoids, or 
of their shagreen ; while the other two,— its upper and in- 
ner sides, — seem to have been developments of the interior 
osseous walls which covered the endo-skeletal cartilage. Nor 
is it unworthy of notice, that the reptile fishes of the period 
had their ichthyic teeth ranged along the edge of an exterior 
dermal plate which covered the outer: side of the jaw; 
whereas their reptile teeth were planted on a plate, ap- 
parently of interior development, which covered its upper 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 79 


edge. It is further worthy of remark, that while the teeth 
of the dermal plate, — themselves also dermal, — seem as if 
they had grown out of i, and formed part of it, — just as the 
teeth of the Placoids grew out of the skin on which they rest, 
— the reptile teeth within rested in shallow pits, — the first 
faint indications of true sockets. 

That space included within the arch formed by the sweep 
of the under jaws, which we find occupied in the osseous 
fishes by the hyoid bones and the branchiostegous rays, was 
filled up externally, in the Dipterians and Ceelacanths, and in 
at least two genera of Cephalaspians, by dermal plates ; in some 
genera, such as the Diplopterus, by three plates; in others, 
such as the Holoptychius and Glyptolepis, by two; and in the 
Asterolepis, as we shall afterwards see, by but a single plate 
In the Osteolepis these plates were increased to five in number, 
by the little plates 14, 14, (fig. 14,) which, however, mav have 


Fig. 14. 





UNDER PART OF HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS.* 





* The jaws (10, 10) which exhibit in the print their greatest 
hreadth. would have presented in the animal, seen from beneath, 


80 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


heen also present in the Diplopterus, though my specimens 
fail to show them. ‘The general arrangement was of much 
elegance, — an elegance, however, which, in the accompanying 
restorations, the dislocation of the free plates, drawn apart to 
‘ndieate their detached character, somewhat tends to obscure 
But the position of the eyes must have imparted to the anl- 
mal a sinister reptile-like aspect. The profile, (fig. 15,) the 














HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS, SEEN IN PROFILE. 


result, not of a chance-drawn outline, arbitrarily filled up, but 
produced by the careful arrangement in their proper places 
of actually existing plates, serves to show how perfectly the 
dermo-skeletal parts of the creature were developed. Some 
of the animals with which we are best acquainted, if rep- 
resented by but their cuticular skeleton, would appear 
simply as sets of hoofs and horns. Even the tortoise or 
pengolin would present about the head and limbs their gaps 
and missing portions; but the dermo-skeleton of the Osteo- 
lenis, composed of solid bone, and burnished with enamel, 
exhibited the outline of the fish entire, and, with the excep- 
tion of the eye, the filling up of all its external parts. Pre 


ee a ens 


their narrow under-edges, and have nearly fallen into the line of the 
sub-opercular plates, (13, 13.) 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 8] 


senting outside, in its original state, no fragment of skin or 
membrane, and with even its most flexible organs sheathed 
in enamelled bone, the Osteolepis must have very much re 
sembled a fish carved in ivory; and, though so effectually 
covered, it would have appeared, from the circumstance, thai 
it wore almcst all its bone outside, as naked as the human 
teeth. 

The cranial buckler of the Diplopterus (fig. 16) somewhat 





CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPLOPTERUS. 


resembled that of its fellow-dipterian the Osteolepis, but ex 
hibited greater elegance of outline, My first perfect speci- 
men, which I owe to the kindness of Mr. John Miller, of 
Thurso, an intelligent geologist of the north, reminded me, as 
it glittered in jet-black enamel on its ground of pale gray, of 
those Roman cuirasses which one sees in old prints, impaled 
on stakes, as the central objects in warlike trophies formed 
of spoils taken in battle. The rounded snout represented the 
- chest and shoulders, the middle portion the waist, and the ex- 
pansion at the nape the piece of dress attached, which, like 
the Highland kilt, fell adown the thighs. The addition 
of a fragment of a sleeve, suspended a little over the eye 


82 CEREBRAL DI. VELOPMENT 


orbits, 2, 2, seemed all that was necessary in order to render 
the resemblance complete. But as I disinte med the buried 
edges of the specimen with a graver, the form, though it 
grew stil] more elegant, became less hat of the ancient 
coat of armor; the snout expanded into a semicircle the 
eye orbits gradually deepened ; and the entire fossil became 
not particularly like any thing but the thing it once was, —- 
the cranial buckler of the Diplopterus. The print (fig. 17) 













He TN 


it 


i } 
vA, 










——— 






= ——— 
SS == 
= > — = 
=< SN = 
Fr = =) 


aS 
CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPLOPTERUS. 


exhibits its true form. It consists of two main divisions, 
occipital (A) and frontal, (C, fig. 16 ;) and in each of these 
we tind a pair of smaller divisions, with what seem to be in- 
dications of yet further division, marked, not by lines, but 
by dots; though I have hitherto failed to determine whether 
the plates which these last indicate possess their independ- 
ent centres of ossification. Not unfrequently, however, has 
the comparative anatomist to seek the analogues of two 
bones in one; nor is it at least more difficult to trace in 
the fain divis.ons of the cranial buckler of the Diplopterus 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 8a 


the homologues of the occipital, frontal, parietal, mastoid, 
and nasal bones, than to recognize the representatives of the 
carpals of the middle and ring finger in man, in the cannon 
bone of the fore leg of the ox. I may mention in passing, 
that the little central plate of the frontal division, (1, fig. 16,) 
which so nearly corresponds with that of the Ostzolepis, 
occurred, though with considerable variations of form and 
hornology, and some slight difference of position, in all the 
Ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone whose craniums were 
covered with an osseous buckler, and that its place was 
always either immediately between the eyes or a very little 
over them. Its never-failing recurrence shows that it must 
have had some meaning, though it may be difficult to say 
what. In the Coccosteus it takes the form of the male 
dovetail, which united the nasal plate or snout to the plate 
representative of the superior frontal. Of the cartilaginous 
box which formed the interior skull of either Osteolepis, 
or Diplopterus, or, with but one excep- 
tion, of the interior skulls of any of 
their contemporaries, no trace, as I a 
have said, has yet been detected. The 
solitary exception in the case is, how- 
ever, one of singular interest. 

In a collection of miscellaneous frag- 
ments sent me by Mr. Dick from the © 
rocks of Thurso, I detected patches 4% 
of palatal teeth ranged in neany the 
quadratures of circles, and which 





radiated outwards from the rectangu- 
a, Palatal dart-head. 
lar angle or centre, (fig. 18, 5.) And b, Group of palatal tecth 


with the patches there occurred plates 
exactly resembling the barbed head of a dart, (a,) with which 


84 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


[ had been previously acquainted, though I had failed tu 
determine their character or place. The excellent state 
of keeping of some of Mr. Dick’s specimens now enabled me 
to trace the patches with the dart-head, and several other 
plates, to a curious piece of palatal mechanism, ranged along 
the base of a ganoid cranium, covered externally bya brightly 
enamelled buckler, and to ascertain the order in which 
patches and plates occurred. And then, though not without 
some labor, I succeeded in tracing the buckler with which 
they were associated to the Dipterus, —a fish which, though 
it has engaged the attention of both Cuvier and Agassiz, has 
not yet been adequately restored. It is on an ill-preserved 
Orkney specimen of the cranial buckler of this Ganoid that 
the ichthyologist has founded his genus Polyphractus ; while 
groupes of its palatal teeth from the Old Red of Russia he 
refers to a supposed Placoid,—the Ctenodus. But in the 
earlier stages of paleontological research, mistakes of this 
character are wholly unavoidable. The paleontologist who 
did avoid them would be either very unobservant, or at once 
very rash and very fortunate in his guesses. If, ere an 
entire-skeleton of the Ichthyosaurus had turned up, there had 
been found in different localities, in the Liasic formation, a 
beak like that of a porpoise, teeth like that of a crocodile, 
a head and sternum like that of a lizard, paddles like those 
of a cetacean, and vertebre like those of a fish, it would 
have been greatly more judicious, and more in accordance 
with the existing analogies, to have erected, provisionally at 
least, plazes specifically, or even generically separated, in 
which to range the separate pieces, than to hold that they had 
all united in one anomalous genus; though such was actually 
the fact. And Agassiz, in erecting three distinct genera out 
of the fragments of a single genus, has in reality acted at once 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 85 


more prudently and more intelligently than if he had avoided 
the error by rashly uniting parts which in their separate state 
indicate no tie of connection. 

The cranial buckler of the Dipterus (fig. 19) was, like 











ART PT 
uc ‘ani i h ) \ 
ti uf } ; 
Cae Kt A 
aay 





¥ 
i “ly aN Shy 
fy) y) i ‘ ‘ 
i i ) ui AI | iN 
Dealt) ia 4 
WAM att Ai.) 
vi ly 
7] i \ id iN 
' haem 
bites ier 
- ay U 








‘ | . 
ote 





; vay \ 
4 









CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPTERUS. 


that of the Diplopterus, of great beauty. In some of tie 
finer specimens, we find the enamel ornately tatooed, within 
the more strongly-marked divisions, by delicately traced lines. 
waved and bent, as if upon the principle of Hogarth; and 
though the lateral plates are numerous and small, and defy 
the homologies, we may trace in those of the central line. 
from the snout to the nape, what seer to be the represen- 
latives of the frontal, parietal, and occipital bones, — the 
parietals ranging, as in the skull of the carp and in that of 
most of the mammals, in their proper place in the media! 
tine. But the under surface of the cranium, armed, as on 
the upper surface, with plates of bone, exhibited an arrang: - 


8 


86 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


ment still more peculiar, (fig. 20.) Its rectangular patches 
of palatal teeth, its curious dart-like bone, placed immediately 





BASE OF CRANIUM OF DIPTERUS. 


behind these, and attached, as the dart-head is attached to 
the handle, to a broad lozenge-shaped plate, with two strong 
osseous processes projecting on either side, forms such a 
tout ensemble as is unique among fishes. Even here, however, 
there may be traced at least a shade of homological resem- 
blance to the bones which form the base of the osseous skull. 
The single lozenge-shaped plate, ‘A,) with its dart-head, 
occupies the place of the basi-occipital bone; the posterior 
portion of the vomer seems represented by a strong bony 
ridge, extending towards the snout; two separate bones, each 
bearing one of the angular patenes of teeth, corresponds to 
the sphenoid bone and its ale ; and attached laterally to each 
of these there is the strong projecting bone, on which the 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 87 


lower jaw appears to have hinged, and which apparently rep- 
resents the lower part of the temporal bone. Not less 
smgular was the form of the creature’s under jaw, (fig. 21.) 


Fig. 21. 





UNDER JAW OF DIPTERUS. 


{ know no other fish-jaw, whether of the recent or the ex- 
tinct races, that might be so readily mistaken for that of a 
quadruped. It exhibits not only the condyloid, but also the 
coronoid processes; and, save that it broadens on its upper 
adges, where in mammals the grinders are placed, so as to 
furnish field enough for angular patches of teeth, which 
correspond with the angular patches in the palate, it might 
be regarded, found detached, as at least a reptilian, if not 
mammalian, bone. ‘The disposition of the palatal teeth of the 
Dipterus will scarce fail to remind the mechanist of the style 
of grooving resorted to in the formation of mill-stones for 
the grinding of flour; nor is it wholly improbable that, in 
worrespondence with the rotatory motion of the stones to 
which the grooving is specially adapted, jaws so hinged may 
have possessed some such power of lateral motion as that 
exemplified by the human subject in the use of the molar 
teeth. 

The protection afforded by the osseous covering of both the 
upper and under surface of the cranium of this ichthyolite has 


88 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


resulted, in several instances, in the preservation, though al- 
ways in a greatly compressed state, of the cranium itself, and 
the consequent exhibition of two very important cranial cavi- 
ties, the brain-pan proper, and the passage through which the 
spinal cord passed into the brain. In the sturgeon the brain 
occupies nearly the middle of the head; and there is a con- 
siderable part of the occipital region traversed by the spine in 
a curved channel, which, seen in profile, appears wide at the 
nape, but considerably narrower where it enters the brain-pan, 
and altogether very much resembling the interior of a minia 
ture hunting-horn. And such exactly was the arrangement 
of the greater cavities in the head of the Dipterus. The por- 
tion of the cranium which was overlaid by what may be re- 
garded as the occipital plate was traversed by a cavity shaped 
like a Lilliputian bugle-horn ; while the hollow in which the 
brain was lodged lay under the two parietal plates, and the 
little elliptical plate in the centre. The accompanying print, 
(fig. 22,) though of but slight show, may be regarded by the 





LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF HEAD OF DIPTERUS 


reader with some little interest, as a not inadequate represen- 
tation of the most ancient brain-pan on which human eye has 
yet looked, —as, in short, the type of cell in which, myriads 
of ages ago, in at least one genus, that ‘mysterious substanc2 
was lodged, on whose place and development so very much 
in the scheme of creation was destined to depend. The speci- 
men from which the figure is taken was laid open laterally by 
chance exposure to the waves on the shores of Thurso; 


JF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 89 


another specimen, cut longitudinally by the saw of the lapi- 
dary, yields a similar section, but greatly more compressed in 
the cavities ; on which, of course, as unsupported hollows, the 
compression to which the entire cranium had been exposed 
chiefly acted. When the top and bottom of a box are 
violently forced together, it is the empty space which the box 
encloses that is anni iilated in consequence of the violence. 

It is deserving of notice, that the analogies of the cranial 
cavities in this ancient Ganoid should point so directly on the 
cranial cavities of that special Ganoid of the present time 
which unites a true skull of cartilage to a dermal skull of 
osseous plates, — a circumstance strongly corroborative of the 
general evidence, negative and positive, on which I[ have con- 
cluded that the true skulls of the first Ganoids were also car- 
tilaginous. It is further worthy of observation, that 1n all the 
sections of the cranium of Dipterus which I have yet ex- 
amined, the internal line is continuous, as in the Placoids, 
trom nape to snout, and that the true skull presents no trace 
of those cerebral vertebre of which skulls are regarded by 
Oken and his disciples as developments. Historically at 
least, the progress of the ichthyic head seems to have been 
a progress from simple cartilaginous boxes to cartilaginous 
boxes covered with osseous plates, that performed the func 
tions whether active or passive, of internal bones ; and then 
from external plates to the interior bones which the plates 
had previously represented, and whose proper work they had 
done. 

The principle which rendered it necessary that the divis 
ions which exist in the dermal skulls of the first Ganoids 
should so closely correspond with the divisions which exist 
in the internal skulls of the osseous fishes of a greatly later 


neriod does not seem to lie far from the surface. Of the 
g§* 


50 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 


solid parts of the ichthyic head, a certain set of pieces afford 
protection to the brain and cerebral nerves, and to some of the 
organs of the senses, such as those of seeing and hearing ; 
while another certain set of pieces constitute the framework 
through which an important class of functions, manducatory 
and respiratory, are performed. The protective bones of 
merely vassive function are fixed, whereas the bones of active 
function, such as the jaws, the osseous framework of the 
opercules, and the hyoid bones, are to the necessary extent 
free i € cepable of independent motion. Of course, the 
detached character necessary to the free cerebral bones would 
be equally necessary in cerebral plates united dermally to the 
pieces of the cartilaginous f:amework, which performed in 
the ancient fish the functions of these free bones. And hence 
jaw plates, opercular plates, and hyoid plates, whose homolog- 
ical relation with recent jaws and opercular and hyoid bones 
cannot be mistaken. They were operative in performing 
identical mechanical functions, and had to exist, in conse- 
quence, in identical mechanical conditions. And an equally 
simple, though somewhat different principle, seems to have 
regulated the divisions of the fixed cranial bucklers of the 
Old Red Ganoids, and to have determined their homologies 
with the fixed cerebral bones of the osseous fishes. 

These cranial bucklers, extending from nape to snout, pro- 
tected the exposed upper surface of the cartilaginous skull, 
and conformed to it in shape, as a helmet conforms to the 
shape of the head, or a breast-plate to the shape of the chest. 
And as the cartilaginous heads resembled in general out 
line the osseous ones, the buckler which covered the 
upper surface resembled in general outline the upper sur- 
face of the osseous skull. It was in no case entirely 9 
flat plate; but in every species rounded over the snout 


OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA 91 


and in most species at the sides; and sc, in order that its 
characteristic proportions might be preserved throughout the 
various stages of growth in the head which it covered, it hac 
to be formed from several distinct centres of ossification, and 
to extend in area around the edges of the plates originated 
from these. The workman finds no difficulty in adding to 
the size of a piece of straight wall, whether by heighten- 
ing or lengthening it; but he cannot add to the size of a 
dome or arch, without first taking it down, and then erecting 
it anew on a larger scale. In the domes and arches of the 
animal kingdom, the problem is solved by building them up of 
distinct pieces, few or many, according to the demands of he 
figure which they compose, and rendering these pieces capab.e 
of increase along their edges. It is on this principle that the 
Cystidea, the Echinidee, the Chelonian carapace and plastron, 
and the skulls of the osseous Vertebrata, are constructed. It 
is also the principle on which the cranial bucklers of the 
ancient Ganoids were formed.* And from the general re- 
semblance in figure of these bucklers to the upper surface of 
the osseous skull, the separate parts necessary for the building 
up of the one were anticipated, by many ages, in the building 
up of the other; just as we find external arches of stone 





* In all probability it is likewise the principle of the placoid 
skull. The numerous osseous points by which the latter is en- 
crusted, each capable of increase at the edges, seem the minute 
bricks of an ample dome. It is possible, however, that new points 
may be formed in the interstices between the first formed ones, 
as what anatomists term the ¢riqguetra or Wormiana form between 
the serrated edges of the lambdoidal suture in the human skull, 
and that the osseous surface of the cerebral dome may thus ex- 
end, as the dome itself increases in size, not through the growth 
of the previously existing pieces, — the minute bricks of my illus- 
tration, — but through the addition of new ones. Equally, in 
either case however, that essential difference between the pla 


92 CEREBRA] DEVELOPMENT 


which were erected two thousand yeurs ago, construc ed o1 / 
the same principle, and relatively of the same parts, as interna) 
arches of brick built in the present age. Doubtless, however. 
with this mechanical necessity for correspondence of parts 
in the formation of corresponding erections, there may have 
mingled that regard for typical resemblance which seems 
so marked a characteristic of the syle, if I may so express 
myself, in which the Divine Architect gives expression to 
lis ideas. ‘The external osseous buckler He divided after 
the general pattern which was to be exemplified, in latter 
tumes, in the divisions of the internal osseous skull ; as if in 
illustration of that ‘‘ ideal exemplar” which dwelt in his 
mind from eternity, and on the palpable existence of which 
sober science has based deductions identical in their scope 
and bearing with some of the sublimest doctrines of the theo- 
logian. ‘The recognition,” says Professor Owen, “of an 
ideal exemplar for the vertebrated animals, proves that the 
knowledge of such a being as man existed before man ap- 
peared; for the Divine mind which planned the archetype 
also foreknew all its modifications. The archetypal idea was 


eoid skull and the placoid vertebra, to which I have referred, 
appears to hinge on the circumstance, that 

while the osseous nucleus of each vertebral Fig. 23. 
centrum could form, in even its most compli- 
cated shape, from a single point, the osse- 
ous walls of the cranium had to be formed 
from hundreds. The accompanying diagram 
serves to show after what manner the verte- 
bral centrum in the Ray enlarges with the gpopron or VERTEBRAL 
growth of the animal, by addition of bony CENTRUM OF THORN: 
matter external to the point in the middle,  BAcK. 

at which ossification first begins. The hori- 

zorital lines indicate the lines of increment in the two internal conet 
which each centrum comprises, and the vertical ones the lines of 
increment in-the lateral pillars. 





OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. 93 


manifested in the flesh, under divers such modifications, upen 
this planet, long prior to the existence of those animal species 
that actually exemplify it.” 

But while we find place in that geological history in which 
every character is an organism, for the “ ideal exemplar” of 
Professor Owen, we find no place in it for the vertebree-de- 
veloped skull of Professor Oken. The true genealogy of the 
head runs in an entirely different line. The nerves of the 
cerebral senses did not, we find, originate cerebral verte- 
bree, seeing that the heads of the first and second geologic 
periods had their cerebral nerves, but not their cerebral verte- 
bree; and that what are regarded as cerebral-vertebre ap 
pear for the first time, not in the early fishes, but in the 
reptiles of the Coal formation. The line of succession 
through the fish, indicated by the Continental assertor of the 
development hypothesis, is a line cut off. All the existing 
evidence conspires to show that the placoid heads of the Si- 
lurian system were, like the placoid heads of the recent 
period, mere cartilaginous boxes ; and that in the succeeding 
system there existed ganoidal heads, that to the internal car- 
tilaginous box added external plates of bone, the homologues, 
apparently, — so far at least as the merely cuticular could be 
representative of the endo-skeletal, — of the opercular, max- 
lary, frontal, and occipital bones in the osseous fishes of a 
long posterior period, — fishes that were not ushered upon the 
scene until after the appearance of the reptile in its highest 
forms and of even the marsupial quadruped. 


94 STRUCTURE 


THE ASTEROLEPIS, ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND 
ASPECT. 


Wirn the reader, if he has accompanied me thus far, I shall 
now pass on to the consideration of the remains of the Astero- 
lepis. Our preliminary acquaintance with the cerebral pecu- 
liarities of a few of its less gigantic contemporaries will be 
found of use in enabling us to determine regarding a class of 
somewhat resembling peculiarities which characterized this 
hugest Ganoid of the Old Red Sandstone. 

The head of the Asterolepis, like the heads of all the other 
Coelacanths, and of all the Dipterians, was covered with osse- 
ous plates, — its body with osseous scales; and, as I have 
already had occasion to mention, it is from the star-like tu- 
bercles by which the cerebral plates were fretted that M. 
Eichwald bestowed on the creature its generic name. Agas- 
siz has even erected species on. certain varieties in the pat- 
tern of the stars, as exhibited on detached fragments; but 
I am far from being satisfied that we are to seek in their 
peculiarities of style the characters by which the several 
species were distinguished. The stellar form of the tu 
bercle seems to have been its normal or most perfect form 
as it was also, with certain modifications, that of the tuber- 
cle of the Coccosteus and Pterichthys ; but its development 
as a complete star was comparatively rare: in most cases the 
tubercles existed without the rays, — frequently in the insu 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 95 


lated pap-like shape, but not rarely confluent, or of an elon: 
gated or bent form; and when to these the characteristic 
rays were added, the stars produced were of a rather eccen 
tric order, — stars somewhat resembling the shadows of stars 
seen n water. Individual specimens have already been 
found, on which, if we recognize the form of the tubercle as 
a specific character, several spe- 
cies might be erected. The ac- 
companying wood-cut (fig. 24) rep- 
resents, from a Thurso specimen, 
what seems to be the true normal 





pattern of these cerebral carvings. 
Seen in profile (4) the tubercles 





b 


Dermal tubercles of Asterolepis 
(Mag. two diameters.) 


resemble little hillocks, perforated 
at their base by single lines of 
thickly-set caves; while seen from 
above, (a,) the narrow piers of bone by which the caves are 
divided take the form of rays. ‘The reader will scarce fail 
to recognise in this print the coral Monticularia of Lamarck, 
or to detect, in at least the profile, the peculiarity which sug. 
gested the name. 

The scales which covered the creature’s body (fig. 25) 
were, in proportion to its size, considerably smaller and thmner 
than those of the Holoptychius, which, however, they greatly 
resemble in their general style of sculpture. Each, on the 
lower part of its exposed field, was, we see, fretted by longi- 
tudinal anastomosing ridges, which, in the upper part, break 
into detached angular tubercles, placed with the apex down- 
wards, and hollowed, leaf-like, in the centre ; while that cov- 
ered portion which was overlaid by the scales immediately 
above we find thickly pitted by microscopic hollows, that give 
to this part of the field, viewed under a tolerably high 


96 STRUCTURE 





G 
h 
SCALES OF ASTEROLEPIS. 
(Nat. size.) 
a. The surface of scale. b. Exterior surfat:. 
Fig 26. magnifying power, a honeycombed appearance. 


The central and lower parts of the interior sur- 
face of the scale (a) are in most of the speci- 
mens irregularly roughened ; while a broad, 
smooth band, which runs along the top and 
sides, and seems to have furnished the line of 
attachment to the creature’s body, is compara- 
tively smooth. The exterior carvings, though 
they demand the assistance of the lens to see 
them aright, are of singular elegance and 
beauty; as perhaps the accompanying wood- 


qAg 


¥ 


aS 





PORTION OF 
“Laven aur. cut, (fig. 26,) which gives a magnified view of a 


rACEOFSCALR = portion of the scale immediately above (0) from 

(Mag. four di h ‘ddl f d 7 
ae the middle of the honeycombed field on the 
right side, to where the anastomosing rdges 


OF THE aSTEROLEPIS. 99 


bend g:acefully in their descent, may in some degree serve to 
show. I have seen a richly inlaid coat of mail, which was 
once worn by the puissant Charles the Fifth ; but its elaborate 
carvings, though they belonged to the age of Benvenuto 
Cellini, were rude and unfinished, compared with those which 
fretted the armor of the Asterolepis. 

The creature’s cramal buckler, which was of great size 
and strength, might well be mistaken for the carapace of some 
Chelonian fish of no inconsiderable bulk. The cranial buck- 
lers of the larger Dipterians were ample enough to have cov- 
ered the corresponding part in the skulls of our middle-sized 
market-fish, such as the haddock and whiting; the buckler 
of a Coccosteus of the extreme size would have covered, if a 
little altered in shape, the upper surface of the skull of a cod, 
but the cranial buckler of Asterolepis, from which the accom- 
panying wood-cut was taken, (fig. 27,) would have considerably 
more than covered the corresponding part in the skull of a 
large horse ; and | have at least one specimen in my collec- 
tion which would have fully covered the front skull cf an ele- 
phant. In the smaller specimens, the buckler somewhat 
resembles a laborer’s shovel divested of its handle, and sore- 
ly rust-eaten along its lower or cutting edge. It consisted 
of plates, connected at the edges by flat squamous sutures, or, 
as a joiner might perhaps say, glued together in bevelled joints. 
And in consequence of this arrangement, the same plates 
which seem broad on the exterior surface appear compara- 
tively narrow on the interior one, and vice versa ; the occipi- 
tal plate, (¢,) which, running from the nape along the centre 
cf the buckler, occupies so considerable a space on its outer 
surface, exhibits inside a superficies reduced at least one half. 
Like nine tenths of its contemporaries, the Asterolepis ex: 
hibits the little central plate between the eyes; but the 

9 


ar STRUCTURE 





CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One fifth nat. size, linear.) 


eye orbits, unlike those of the Coccosteus, and of all the 
Dipterian genera, which were half-scooped out of the cranial 
buckler, half-encircled by detached plates, were placed com- 
pletely within the field of the buckler, — a circumstance 
in which they resemble the eye orbits of the Pterichthys, 
and, among existing fish, those of the sea-wolf. The 
characteristic is also a distinctive one in Cuvier’s second 
family of the Acanthopterygii, — the “ fishes with hard 
cheeks.” A deep line immediately over the eyes, which, 
however, indicated no suture, but seems to have been mere- 
ly ornamental, forms a sort of rudely tatooed eyebrow ; 
the marginal lines parallel to the lateral edges of the buck- 
ler were also mere tatooings; but all the others indicated 
joints which, though more or less anchylosed, had a real 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 9% 


existence. So flat was the surface, that the edge of a rule: 
rests upon it, in my several specimens, both iengthwise and 
across ; but it was traversed by two flat ridges, which, stretch- 
ing from the corners of the latero-posterior, %. e. parietal, 
plates, (d, b,) converged at the little plate between the eyes , 
while along the centre of the depressed angle which .hey 
formed, a third ridge, equally flat with the others, ran towards 
the same point of convergence from the nape. The three 
ridges, when strongly relieved by a slant light, resemble 
not inadequately an impression, on a large scale, of ths 
Queen’s broad arrow. 





INNER SURFACE OF CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS. 
(One fifth nat. size, linear.) 


The inner surface of the cranial buckler of Asterolepis, (fig, 
28,)— that which rested on the cartilaginous box which 
formed the creature’s interior skull, —stands out in bolder 
relief from the stone than its outer surface and forms a more 


100 STRUCTURE 


picturesque object. Like the inner surfaces of the bucklers 
of Coccosteus and Pterichthys, but much more thickly than 
these, it was traversed by minute channelled markings, some- 
what resembling those strie which may be detected in the 
flatter bones of the ordinary fishes, and which seem in these 
to be mere interstices between the osseous fibres. And in the 
plates, as in the bones, they radiate from the centres of ossifi- 
cation, which are comparatively dense and massy, towards the 
thinner overlapping edges. ‘These radiating lines are equally 
well marked in the cerebral bones of the human feetus. The 
three converging ridges on the outer surface we find on the 
inner surface also, —the lateral ones a little bent in the mid- 
dle, but so directly opposite those outside, that the thicken 
ing of the buckler which takes place along their line is e. 
least as much a consequence of their inner as of their outer 
elevation over the general platform. A fourth bar ran 
transversely along the nape, and formed the cross beam on 
which the others rested; for the three longitudinal ridges 
may be properly regarded as three strong beams, which, es- 
tending from the transverse beam at the nape to the front, 
where they converged like the spokes of a wheel at the nave, 
gave to the cranial roof a degree of support of which, from 
its great flatness, it may have stood in need. In cranial 
bucklers in which the average thickness of the plates does 
not exceed three eighth parts of an inch, their thickness in 
the centre of the ridges exceeds three quarters. The head 
of the largest crocodile of the existing period is defended 
by an armature greatly less strong than that worn by the 
Asterolepis »f the-Lower Old Red Sandstone. Why this 
ancient Ganoid should have been so ponderously helmed 
we can but doubtfully guess; we only know, that when na- 
ture arms her soldiery, there are assailants to be resisted and 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 10] 


u state of war to be maintained. The posterior central plate, 
the homologue apparently of the occipital bone, was curiously 
carved into an ornate massive leaf, like one of the larger 
leaves of a Corinthian capital, and terminated beneath, 
where the stem should have been, in a strong osseous knob, 
fashioned like a pike head. Two plates immediately over it, 
the homologues of the superior frontal bone, with the little 
nasal plate which, perched atop in the middle, lay between the 
creature’s eyes, resembled the head and breast in the female 
figure, at least not less closely than those of the “ lady in the 
lopster ;” the posterior frontal plates in which the outer and 
nether half of the eye orbits were hollowed formed a pair of 
sweeping wings, and thus in the centre of the buckler we are 
presented with the figure of an angel, robed and winged, and 
of which the large sculptured leaf forms the body, traced in 
a style in no degree more rude than we might expect to see 
exemplified on the lichen-encrusted shield of some ancient 
tombstone of that House of Avenel which bore as its arms the 
effigies of the Spectre Lady. Children have a peculiar knack 
in detecting such resemblances; and the discovery of 
the angel in the cranium of the Asterolepis I owe to one of 
mine. 

It is on this inner side of the cranial buckler, where there 
are no such pseudo-joinings indicated as on the external sur 
face, that the homologies of the plates of which it is com 
posed can be best traced. It might be well, however, ere 
setting one’s self to the work of comparison, to examine the 
skulls of a few of the osseous fishes of our coast, and to mark 
how very considerably they differ from one another in their 
lines of suture and their general form. The cerebral divis- 
ions of the conger-eel, for instance, are very unlike those of 
the haddock or whiting; and the sutures in the head of the 

Q * 


102 STRUCTURE 


gurnard are dissimilarly arranged from those in the head of 
the perch. And after tracing the general type in the more 
anomalous forms, and finding, with Cuvier, that in even these 
the ‘* skull consists of the same bones, though much subdivid- 
ed, as the skulls of the other vertebrata,” we will be the bet- 
ter qualified for grappling with the not greater anomalies 
which occur in the cranial buckler of the Asterolepis. The 
occipital plate, A, a, a, (fig. 29,) occupies its ordinary place 





PLATE OF CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


opposite the centre of the nape; the two parietals, B, B, rest 
peside it in their usual ichthyic position of displacement; the 
superior frontal we find existing, as in the young-of rnany ani- 
mals, in two pieces, C, C ; the nasal plate I, placed immediately 
m advance of it, is flanked, as in the cod, by the anterior front- 
als, D, D; the posterior frontals, F, F, which, when viewed 
ns in the print, from beneath, seem of considerable size, and 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 103 


describe aterally and posteriorly about one half the eye 
orbits, have their area on the exterior surface greatly reduced 
by the overriding squamose sutures of the plates to whica | 
they join; and lastly, two of these overlying plates, E, E, — 
which, occurring in the line of the lateral bar or beam, are 
of great strength and thickness, and lie for two thirds of their 
length along the parietals, and for the remaining third along 
the superior frontals, — represent the mastoid bones. Such, 
so far as I have been yet able to read the cranial buckler 
of the Asterolepis, seem to be the homologies of its component 
plates. 

There were no parts of the animal more remarkable than 
its jaws. The under jaws,—for the nether maxillary con- 
sisted, in this fish, as in the placoid fishes, and in the quad- 
rupeds generally, of two pieces joined in the middle, — were, 
like those of the Holoptychius, boxes of bone, which enclosed 
central masses of cartilage. The outer and under sides were 
thickly covered with the characteristic star-like tubercles ; and 
along the upper margin or lip there ran a thickly-set row 
- of small broadly-based teeth, planted as directly on the edge 
of the exterior plate as iron spikes on the upper edge of a 
gate (fig. 30.) Mr. Parkinson expresses some wonder ir 


Fig. 30. 





PORTION JF UNDER JAW OF ASTEROLEPIS, (OUTER 8SIDB.) 


(One halt nat. size.) 


104 STRUCTURE 


his work on fossils, that, in a fine ichthyolite in the British 
Museum, not only the teeth should have been preserved, but 
also the lips ; but we now know enough of the construction 
of the ancient Ganoids to cease wondering. ‘The lips were 
formed of as solid bone as the teeth themselves, and had 
as fair a chance of being preserved entire; just as the 
metallic rim of a cogged wheel has as fair a chance of being 
preserved as the metallic cogs that project from it. Immedi- 
ately behind the front row,—im which the teeth present the 
ordinary ichthyic appearance, —there ran a thinly-set row 
of huge reptile teeth, based on an interior platform of 
bone, which formed the top of the cartilage-enclosing box 
composing the jaw. These were at once bent outwards and 
twisted laterally, somewhat like nails that have been drawn 
out of wood by the claw of a carpenter’s harnmer, and bent 
awry with the wrench, (fig. 31.) They were furrowed 


Fig. 31. 





PORTION OF UNDER JAW OF ASTEROLEPIS, (INNER SIDE.) 


(One half nat. size.) 


longitudinally from point to base by minute thickly-set strie ; 
and were furnished laterally in most of the specimens 
though not in all, with two sharp cutting edges. ‘The reptile 
had as yet no existence in creation; but we see its future 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 105 


coming symbolized in the dentition of this ancient Ganoid . 
It, as it were, shows us the crocodile lying entrenched behind 
the fish. The interior structure of these reptile teeth is 
very remarkable. In the longitudinal section we find 
numerous cancelli, ranged lengthwise along the cuter 
edges, but much crossed, net-like, within, — greatly more 
open towards the base than at the point,—and giving place 
in the centre to a hollow space, occasionally traversed by a 
few slim osseous partitions. In the transverse section these 
cancelli are found to radiate from the open centre towards 
the circumference, like the spokes of a wheel from the 
nave ; and each spoke seems as if, like Aaron’s rod, it had 
become instinct with vegetative life, and had sprouted into 
branch and blossom. Seen in a microscope of limited field. 
that takes in, as in the accompanying print, (fig. 32,) not more 


Fig. 32. 





A ey LN 









ROS G SANK 
Deter aaa 59: 
Epo as 


A eiio 





PORTION OF TRANSVERSE SECTION OF REPTILE TOOTH OF ASTEROLEPIS 


a. Nat. size. b. Mag. twelve diameters. 


106 STRUCTURE . 


than a fourth part of the section, the appearance presented is 
that of a well-trained wall tree. And hence the generic 
aame Dendrodus, given by Professor Owen to teeth found 
Jetached in the deposits of Movay, when the creatures to 
which they had belonged were still unknown, -—a name, 
however, which will, I suspect, be found synonymous rather 
with that of a family than of a genus; for so far as | have 
yet examined, I find that the dendrodic or tree-like tooth, was 
m at least the Old Red Sandstone, a characteristic of all the 
Ceelacanth family. I may mention, however, as a curious 
subject of inquiry, thatthe Cosacanths of the Coal Measures 
seem to have had their reptile teeth formed of pure ivory, — 
3 substance which I have not yet detected among the reptile- 
fish of the Old Red. Towards the base of the reptile teeth 
of Asterolepis, the interstices between the branches greatly 
widen, as in the branches of a tree in winter divested of its 
foliage, (fig. 38, c;) the texture also opens towards the 
base in the fish-teeth 
outside, in which, how- 
ever, the pattern in 
the transverse section 
is greatly less complex 
and ornate than that 
which the reptile teeth 
exhibits. . When cut 





A. Section of Jato of Asterolepis. across near the point, 
c. Reptile tooth as shown in section. they appear each as 
a, b, & c. Row of ichthyic teeth in dermal 


plate offi: a thick ring, (d,) tra- 
B. Magnified representatives of ichthyic versed by lines that 
teeth, aand b, in A. radiate towards the 
centre; when cut across about half way down, they 


somewhat resemble, seen under a high magnifying power 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 107 


those cast-iron wheels on which the engineer mcunts his 
railway carriages, (a.) In the longitudinal section their line 
of junction with the iaw is marked by numerous openings, 
tut by no line of division, and they appear as thickly dotted 
by what were once canaliculi, or life points, as any portion of 
the dermal bone on which they rest. 

{t seems truly wonderful, when one considers it, to what 
minute and obscure ramifications that variety of pattern which 
nature so loves to maintain is found to descend. It descends 
in the fishes, both recent and extinct, to even the microscopic 
structure of their teeth; and we find, in consequence, not 
less variety of figure in the sliced fragments of the teeth of 
the ichthyolites of a single formation, than in the carved blocks 
of an extensive calico piint-yard. Each species has its own 
distinct pattern, as if, in all the individuals of which it con- 
sisted, the same block had been employed to stamp it; and 
each genus its own general type of pattern, as if the same 
radical idea, variously altered and modified, had been wrought 
upon in all. In the Dendrodic (Ccelacanth ?) family, for in: 
stance, it is the radical type, that from a central nave there 
should radiate, spoke-like, a number of arborescent branches ; 
but in the several genera and species of the family, the 
branches belong, if I may so express myself, to different 
shrubs, and present dissimilar outlines. It has appeared to me, 
that at least a presumption against the transmutation of species 
might be based on those inherent peculiarities of structure 
which are tiwus found to pervade ‘the entire texture of the 
framework of animals. If we find erections differing from 
one another merely in external form, we have no difficulty in 
conceiving how, by additions and alterations, they might be 
brought to exhibit a perfect uniformity of plan and aspect : 
transmutation, — development, — progression, —(if one may 


108 STRUCTURE 


use such terms,) — seem possible in such circumstances. But 
'f the buildings differ from each other, not only in external 
form, but also in every brick and beam, bolt and nail, no mere 
scheme of external alteration could ever induce a real resem- 
blance. Every brick would have to be taken down, and every 
beam and bolt removed. The problem could not be wrought 
by the remodelling of an old house : the only mode of solving 
it would be by the erection of a new one. 

Of the upper maxillary bones of the Asterolepis, 1 only 
know that a considerable fragment of one of the pieces, 
recognized as such by Agassiz, has been found in the neigh- 
borhood of Thurso by Mr. Dick, unaccompanied, however, 
by any evidence respecting its place or function. It exhibits 
none of the characteristic tubercles of the dermal bones, and 
no appearance of teeth; but is simply a long bent bone, re- 
sembling somewhat less than the half of an ancient bow of 
steel or horn, — such a bow as that which Ulysses bended in 
the presence of the suitors. By some of the Russian geolo- 
gists this bone was at first regarded as a portion of the arm 
or wing of some gigantic Pterichthys. In the accompanying 
orint (fig. 34) I have borrowed the general outline from that 


Fig. 34. 





One fourth nat. size, linear.) 


of a specimen of Professor Asmus, of which a cast may be 
seen in the British Museum ; while the shaded portion rep 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 109 


resents the fragment found by Mr. Dick. The inermaxillary 
bones, like the dermal plates of the lower jaw, were studded 
by star-like tubercles, and bristled thickly along their lower 
edges with the ichthyic teeth, flanked by teeth of the reptilian 
character. The opercules of the animal consisted, as in the 
sturgeon, of single plates (fig. 35) of great massiveness and 
size, thickly tubercled outside, with- 
out trace of joint or suture, and marked 
on their under surface by channelled 
lines, that radiate, as in the other 
plates, from the centre of ossifica- 
ion. That space along the nape 





which intervened between the oper- 


cules, was occupied, as in the Dip- 1NNER suRFACE oF oPER 
CULUM OF ASTEROLEPIS 


ferus and Diplopterus, by three p!ates 
POOP ny, P ” (One fifth nat. size, linear.) 


which covered rather the anterior 

portion of the body than the posterior portion of the head, 
and which, in the restoration of Osteolepis, (fig. 18,) appear 
as the plates, 9,9, 9. {can say scarce any thing regarding 
the lateral plates which lay between the intermaxillaries and 
the cranial buckler, and which exist in the Osteolepis, fig. 13, 
as the plates 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7; nor do 1 know how the snout 
terminated, save that in a very imperfect specimen it exhibits, 
as in the Diplopterus and Osteolepis, a rounded outline, and 
was set with teeth. 

That space comprised within the arch of the lower jaws, in 
which the hyoid bone and branchiostegous rays of the osseous 
fishes occur, was filled by a single plate of great size and 
strength, and of singular form, (fig. 36 ;) and to this plate, ex- 
isting as a steep ridge running along the centre of the interior 
surface, and thickening into a massy knob at the anterior ter. 
mination, that nail-shaped organism, which I have described 

10 


110 STRUCTURE 





HYOID PLATE. 


(One ninth nat. size, linear.) 


as one of the most characteristic bones of the Asterolepis, 
belonged. In the Osteolepis, the space corresponding to that 
occupied by this hyoid plate was filled, as shown in fig. 14, 
by five plates of not inelegant form ; and the divisions of the 
arch resembled those of a small Gothic window, in which 
the’ single central mullion parts into two branches atop. In 
the Holoptychius and Glyptolepis there were but two plates ; 
for the central mullion, z. e. line of division, did not branch 
atop; and in the Asterolepis, where there was no line of 
division, the strong nail-like bone occupied the place of the 
central mullion. The hyoidal armature of the latter fish 
was strongest in the line in which the others were weakest. 
Each of the five hyoid plates of the Osteolepis, or of the two 
plates of the Glyptolepis or Holoptychius, had its own centre 
of ossification; and in the single plate of Asterolepis, the 
centre of ossification, as shown by the radiations of the fibre, 
was the nail-head. This head, placed in immediate con- 
tact with the strong boxes of bone which composed the 
under jaw, just where their central joining occurred, seems to 
have lent them a considerable degree of support, which at 
such a juncture may have been not unnecessary. In some of 
the nail-heads, belonging, it is probable, to a different species 
of Asterolepis from that in which the nail figurea m page 7 


OF TIE ASTERULEPIS. 11) 


and the plate in the opposite page, occurrea, — for its general 
form is different, (fig. 3'7,) — there appear well- 
marked ligamentary impressions closely resem- 
bling that little spongy pit in the head of the 
human thigh-bone to which what is termed the 
round ligament is attached. The entire hyoid- 
plate, viewed on its outer side, resembles in form 
the hyoid-bone, — or cartilage rather, — of the 
spotted dog-fish, (Scyl/ium stellare ;) but its area 
was at least a hundred times more extensive 
than in the largest Scyllium, and, like all the 
dermal plates of the Asterolepis, it was thickly 
fretted by the characteristic tubercles. In the 
Ray, as in the Sharks, the piece of thin cartilage 
of which this plate seems the homologue, is a  NATL-LIKE 
flat, semi-transparent disk ; and there is no part dees eats ve 
of the animal in which. the progress of those (One half nat. 
bony molecules which encrust the internal aot 
framework may be more distinctly traced, as if in the act of 
creeping over what they cover, in slim threads or shooting 
points, — and much resembling new ice creeping in a frosty 
evening over the surface of a pool. 

That suite of shoulder-bones that in the osseous fishes 
forms the belt or frame on which the opercules rest, and fur- 
nishes the base of the pectorals, was represented in the As- 
terolepis, as in the sturgeon, by a ring of strong osseous plates, 
which, in one of the two species of which trace is to be found 


Fig. 37. 





among the rocks of Thurso, were curiously fretted on their 
external surfaces, and in the other species comparatively 
smooth. The largest, or coracoidian plate of the ring, as it 
occurs in the more ornate species, (fig. 38,) might be readily 
enough mistaken, when seen with only its surface exposed 


112 STRUCTURE 


Fig. 38. 









SSS SSS = 
ENS . {SSS ee a : 


SHOULDER (i. €. CORACOID?) PLATE OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One third nat. size, linear.) 


for the ichthyodorulite of some large fish, allied, mayhap, to 
the Gyracanthus formosus of the Coal Measures ; but when 
detached from the stone, the hollow form and peculiar strize 
of the inferior surface serve to establish its true character as 
a dermal plate. The diagonal furrowings which traversed 
it, as the twisted flutings traverse a Gothic column moulded 
after the type of the Apprentice Pillar in Roslin chapel, seem 
to have underlaid the edge of the opercule ; at least I find a 
similar arrangement in the shoulder-plates of a large species 
of Diplopterus, which are deeply grooved and furrowed where 
the opercule rested, as if with the design of keeping up a 
eommunication between the branchie and the external ele- 
ment, even when the gill-cover was pressed closely down 
upon them. And,—as in these shoulder-plates of the Dzp- 
lopterus the furrows yield their place beyond the edge of the 
opercule to the punctulated enamel common to the outer 
surface of all the creature’s external plates and scales, — we 
find them yielding their place, in the shoulder-plates of the 
Asterolepis, to the starred tubercles. 

A few detached bones, that bear on their outer surfaces 
the dermal markings, must have belonged to that angular- 
shaped portion of the head which intervened between the 
cranial buckler and the intermaxillary bone; but the key 
for assigning to them their proper place is still to find ; and 
I suspect that no amount of skill on the part of the compa- 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 114 


rative anatomist will ever qualify him to complete the work 
of restoration without it. I have submitted to the reader the 
cranial bucklers of five several genera of the ganoids of the 
Old Red Sandstone; but no amount of study bestowed on 
these would enable even the most skilful ichthyologist te 
restore a sixth; nor is the lateral area of the head, which 
was, I find, variously occupied in each genus, less difficult 
to restore than the buckler which surmounted it. Two of 
the more entire of these dermal bones I have figured (fig. 39, 
2 end dD) in the hope of assisting future inquirers, who, were 


Fig. 39. 





DERMAL BONES OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One third nat. size, linear.) 


they to pick up all the other plates, might yet be unable, 
lacking the figured ones, to complete the whole. The 
2uriously-shaped plate a, represented in its various sides by 
the figures 1, 2, 3, is of an acutely angular form in the trans- 
verse section, (the external surface, 1, forming an angle which 
varies from thirty to forty-five degrees with the base, 3 ;) 
and as it lay, it is probable when in its original place, 
10 * 


{1! STRUCTURE 


ummediately under the edge of the cranial buckler, it may 
ave served to commence the line of deflection from the flat 
top of the head to the steep descent of the sides, just as what 
are technically termed the spur-stones in a gable-head serve 
vo commence the line of deflection from the vertical outline 
of the wall to the inclined line of the roof, or as the spring- 
stones of an arch serve to commence the curve. A few 
‘ternal bones in my possession are curious, but exceed- 

Fig. 40. ingly puzzling. The bone a, fig. 
40, which resembles a rib, or bran- 
chiostegous ray, of one of the or- 
dinary fishes, formed apparently 
part of that osseous style which 
in fishes such as the haddock and 
cod we find attached to the suite 
of shoulder-bones, and which, ac- 
cording to Cuvier, is the analogue 





of the coracoidian bone, and, ac- 
iNTERNAL BONES OF ASTERO- cording to Professor Owen, the ana 
(one eee, Wee logue of the clavicle. Fig. b is a 

mere fragment, broken at both ends, 
but exhibiting, in a state of good keepipg, lateral expan: 
sions, like those of an ancient halbert. Fig. c, 41, whicn 
is also a fragment, though a more considerable one, bears 
in its thicker and straighter edge a groove like that of an 
ichthyoderulite, which, however, the bone itself in ne 
degree resembles. Fig. d is a flat bone, of a type common 
in the skeleton of fishes, but which, in mammals, we find 
exemplified in but the scapulars. It seems, like these, to 
have furnished the base to which some suite of movable 
bones was articulated, —in all likelihood that proportion of 


the carpal bonelets of the pectoral fins which are attached in 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 115 





INTERNAL BONES OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One third nat. size, linear.) 


the osseous fishes to its apparent homologue, the radius. Fig 
e,a slim light bone, which narrows and thickens in the centre, 
and flattens and broadens at each end, was probably a scapula 
or shoulder-blade, —a bone which in most fishes splices on, 
as a sailor would say, by squamose jointings, to the coracoi- 
dian bone at the one end, and the super-scapular bone at the 
other. As indicated by its size, it must have belonged toa 
small individual: it is, however, twice as long, and about six 
times as bulky, as the scapula of a large cod. 

Of the bone represented in fig. 42, I have determined, from 
a Cromarty specimen, the place and use: it formed the inte- 
rior base to which one of the ventral fins was attached. In 
all fishes the bones of the hinder extremities are inadequately 
represented: ir. none do we find the pelvic arch complete; 
and to that nether portion of it which we do find represented, 
and which Professor Owen regards as the homologue of the 


116 STRUCTURE. 





ISCHIUM OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One half nat. size, linear.) 


os ischium cr hip-bone, the homologues of the metatarsal and 
toe-bones are attached, to the exclusion of the bones of the 
thigh and leg. In the Abdominales, — fishes such as the 
salmon and carp, — that have the ventrals placed behind the 
abdomen, in the position analogous to that in which the 
hinder legs of the reptiles and mammals occur, the ischiatic 
bones generally exist as flat triangular plates, with their heads 
either turned inwards and downwards, as in the herring, or 
outwards and downwards, as in the pike ; whereas in some of 
the cartilaginous fishes, such as the Rays and Sharks, they 
exist as an undivided cartilaginous band, stretched transversely 
from ventral to ventral. And such, with but an upward di 
rection, appears to have been their position in the Asterolepis 
They seem to have united at the narrow neck A, over the 
middle of the lower portion of the abdomen; and to the 
notches of the flat expansion B, — notches which exactly re- 
semble those of the immensely developed carpal bones of the 
Ray, — five metatarsal bones were attached, from which the 
fin expanded. It is interesting to find the number in this 
ancient representative of the vertebrata restricted to five, — a 
number greatly exceeded in most of the existing fishes, but 
which is the true normal number of the vertebrate sub-king- 
dom as shown in all the higher examples such as man, the 
quadrumana, and in most of the carnaria. The form of this 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 19 


bone somewhat resembles that of the analogous bone in those 
fishes, such as the perch and gurnard, cod and haddock, which 
have their ventrals suspended to the scapular belt; but its 
position in the Cromarty specimen, and that of the ventrals 
in the various specimens of the Ceelacanth family in which 
their place is still shown, forbids the supposition that 4 was 
so suspended, —a circumstance in keeping with all the exist- 
ing geological evidence on the subject, which agrees in indi 
cating, that of the low type of fishes that have, monster-like, 
their feet attached to their necks, the Old Red Sandstone does 
not afford a trace. This inferior type, now by far the most 
prevalent in the ichthyic division of the animal kingdom, does 
not seem to have been introduced until near the close of the 
Secondary period, long after the fish had been degraded from 
its primal place in the fore front of creation. In one of my 
Specimens a few fragments of the rays are preserved, (fig. 
43, 0.) ‘They are about the eighth part 

of an inch in diameter: depressed in Hig. 

some cases in the centre, as if, over the = | 
internal hollow formed by the decay of 





the cartilaginous centre, the bony crust 5 = 
. * . a. Single 5 joint as ray of 

of which they are compesed had given Thornback, 
way ; and, like the rays of the thorn-  b. Single joint of ray of 

Asterolepis. 


back, they are. thickened at the joints, 
and at the processes by which they were attached to the ischiatic 
base. It may be proper, I should here state, that of some of 
the internal bones figured above I have no better evidence 
that they belonged to the Asterolepis, than that they occur 
in the same beds with the dermal plates which bear the char 
acteristic star-like markings, — that they are of very consid 
erable size,—and that they formed no part of the known 
fishes of the formation. 


{18 STRUCTURE 


On exactly the same grounds I infer that certain large cop 
colites of common occurrence in the Thurso flagstones, which 
contain the broken scales of Dipterians, and exhibit a curi- 
ously twisted form, (fig. 44,) also belonged te the Aster olepis ; 





COPROLITES OF ASTEROLEPIS. 


(Nat. Size.*) 


and from these, that the creature was carnivorous in its hab 
its, —an inference which the character of its teeth fully cor 
roborates; and farther, that, like the sharks and rays, and 
some of the extinct Enaliosaurs, it possessed the spiral dis: 
position of intestine. Paley, in his chapter on the compensa- 
tory contrivances palpable in the structure of various animals, 
refers to a peculiar substitutory provision which occurs in a 





OMGH As Te 


* One of the Thurso coprolites in my possession is about on€ 
fourth longer than the larger of the two specimens figured here, anc 
nearly thrice as broad. 


OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 119 


certain amphibious animal described in the Memoirs of the 
French Academy. “The reader will remember,” he says, 
‘what we have already observed concerning the intestinal 
canal,-— that its length, so many times exceeding that of the 
body, promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, 
by giving room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through 
i greater space. ‘This long intestine, whenever it occurs, is 
in other animals disposed in the abdomen from side to side, 
in returning folds. But in the animal now under our notice, 
the matter is managed otherwise. The same intention is 
mechanically effectuated, but by a mechanism of a different 
kind. The animal cf which I speak is an amphibious 
quadruped, which our authors call the Alopecias or sea- 
fox. The intestine is straight from one end to the other 

but in this straight, and consequentiy short intestine, is a 
winding, cork-screw, spiral passage, through which the food, 
not without several circumvolutions, and, in fact, by a long 
route, is conducted to its exit. Here the shortness of the 
gut is compensated by the obliquity of the perforation.”” This 
structure of intestine, which ail the true Placoids possess, 
and at least the Sturiones among existing Ganoids, seems tu 
have been an exceedingly common one during both the 
Paleozoic and Secondary periods. It has left its impress 
on all the better preserved coprolites of the Coal Measures, 
so abundant in the shales of Newhaven and Burdie House, 
and on those of the Lias and Chalk. It seems to be equally 
a characteristic of well nigh al! the bulkier coprolites of the 
Lower Old Red Sandstone.* In these, however, it manifests 








*In two of these, in a collection of several score, I have failed 
to detect the spiral markings, though their state of keeping 1s 
decidedly good. There are other appearances which lead me to 


120 STRUCTURE OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. 


a peculiar trait, which I have failed to detect in any of the 
recent fishes; nor have I yet seen it indicated, in at least the 
same degree, by the Carboniferous or Secondary coprolitic 
remains. In the bowels which moulded the coprolites of 
Lyme-Regis, of the Chalk, and of the Newhaven and Granton 
beds, a single screw must have winded within the cylindrical 
tube, asa turnpike stair winds within its hollow shaft; and 
such also is the arrangement in the existing Sharks and 
Rays; whereas the bowels which moulded the coprolites ot 
the Lower Old Red Sandstone must have been traversed by 
triple or quadruple screws laid closely together, as we find 
the stalk of an old-fashioned wine-glass traversed by its 
thickly-set spiral lines of thread-like china. And so, while 
on the surface of both the Secondary and Carboniferous 
coprolites there is space between the screw-like lines for 
aumerous cross markings that correspond to the thickly set 
veiny branches which traverse the sides of the recent placoid 
bowel, the entire surface of the Lower Old Red coprolites is 
traversed by the spiral markings. Is there nothing strange in 
the fact, that after the lapse of mayhap millions of years, — 
nay, it is possible, millions of ages, — we should be thus able 
to detect at once general resemblance and special dissimilarity 
in even the most perishable parts of the most ancient of the 
Ganoids ? 

I must advert, in passing, to a peculiarity exemplified in 
the state of keeping of the bones of this ancient Ganoid, in at 
least the deposites of Orkney and Caithness. The original 
animal matter has been converted into a dark-colored bitumen, 








suspect that the Asterolepis was not the only large fish of the Lower 
Old Red Sandstone; but my facts on the subject are too inconclus?e 
to justify aught more than sedulous inquiry. 


STATE OF KEEPING OF ITS REMAINS. 22) 


which in some places, where the remains lie thick, pervades 
the crevices of the rocks, and has not unfrequently been 
mistaken for coal. In its more solid state it can hardly be 
distinguished, when used in sealing a letter,— a purpose 
which it serves indifferently well, — from black wax of the 
ordinary quality; when more fluid, it adheres scarce less 
strongly to the hands than the coal-tar of our gas-works and 
dock-yards. Underneath a specimen of Asterolepis, first 
pointed out to me in its bed among the Thurso rocks by Mr. 
Dick, and which, at my request, he afterwards raised and 
sent me to Edinburgh, packed up in a box, there lay a 
quantity of thick tar, which stuck as fast te my fingers, on 
lifting out the pieces of rock, as if I had laid hold of the 
planking of a newly tarred yawl. What had been once the 
nerves, muscles, and blood of this ancient Ganoid still lay 
under its bones, and reminded me of the appearance presented 
by the remains of a poor suicide, whose solitary grave, dug in 
a sandy bank in the north of Scotland, had been laid open by 
the encroachments of a river. ‘The skeleton, with pieces of 
the dress still wrapped round it, lay at length along the sec- 
tion; and, for a full yard beneath, the white dry sand was 
consolidated into a dark-colored pitchy mass, by the altered 
animal matter which had escaped from it, percolating down- 
_ wards, in the process of decay. 

In consequence of the curious chemical change which has 
thus taken place in the animal juices of the Aséerolepis, its 
remains often occur in a state of beautiful preservation: the 
pervading bitumen, greatly more conservative in its effects 
than the oils and gums of an old Egyptian undertaker, has 
maintained, in their original integrity, every scale, plate, and 
bone. They may have been much broken ere they were 


first committed to the keeping of the rock, or in disentangling 
11 


122 THE ASTEROLEPIS : 


them from its rigid embrace ; but they have, we find, caughi 
no harm when under its care. Ere the skeleton of the 
Bruce, disinterre’ <fter the lapse of five centuries, was 
recommitted to the :umb. such measures were taken to secure 
its preservation, that, were it to be again disinterred, even 
after as many more centuries had passed, it might be found 
retaining unbroken its gigantic proportions. There was 
molten pitch poured over the bones, in a state of sufficient 
fluidity to permeate all the pores, and fill up the central 
hollows, and which, soon hardening around them, formed a 
bituminous matrix, in which they may lie unchanged for a 
thousand years. Now, exactly such was the process tc 
which nature resorted with these gigantic skeletons of the 
Old Red Sandstone. Like the bones of the Bruce, they are 
bones steeped in pitch; and so thoroughly is every pore and 
hollow still occupied, that, when cast into the fire, they flame 
like torches. Though black as jet, they still retain, too, in a 
considerable degree, the peculiar qualities of the original 
substance. The late Mr. George Sanderson of Edinburgh, 
one of the most ingenious lapidaries in the kingdom, and a 
thoroughly intelligent man, made several preparations for me, 
for microscopic examination, from the teeth and bones; and 
though they were by far the oldest vertebrate remains he had 
ever seen, they exhibited, he informed me, in the working, 
more of the characteristics of recent teeth and bone than any 
other fossils he had ever operated upon. Recent bone 
when in the course of being reduced on the wheel to the 
degree of thinness necessary to secure transparency, is apt, 
under the heat induced by the friction, to acquire a springy 
elasticity, and to start up from the glass slip to which it has 
been cemented; whereas bone in the fossil state usually 


lies as passive, in such circumstances, as the stone which en 


STATE OF KEEPING OF ITS REMAINS. 123 


velopes it. Mr. Sanderson was, however, surprised .o find 
that the bone of the Asterolepis still retained its elasticity, 
and was scarce less liable, when heated, to start from the 
glass,— a peculiarity through which he at first lost several 
preparations. I have seen a human bone that had for ages 
been partially embedded in a mass of adipocere, partially 
enveloped in the common mould of a churchyard, exhibit 
two very different styles of keeping. In the adipocere it was 
as fresh and green as if it had been divested of the integu- 
ments only a few weeks previous; whereas the portion which 
projected into the mould had become brittle and porous, and 
presented the ordinary appearance of an old churchyard bone. 
And what the adipocere had done for the human bone in this 
case, seems to have been done for the bones of the Asteros 
lepis by the animal bitumen. 

The size of the Asterolepis must, in the larger specimens, 
have been very great. In all those ganoidal fishes of the 
Old Red Sandstone that had the head covered with osseous 
plates, we find that the cranial buckler bore a certain defi- 
nite proportion, — various in the several genera and species, 
—to the length of the body. The drawing-master still 
teaches his pupils to regulate the proportions of the human 
figure by the seven head-lengths which it contains; and 
perhaps shows them how an otherwise meritorious drafts 
man,* much employed half an age ago in drawing for the 
wood-engraver, used to render his figures squat and ungrace- 
ful by making them a head too short. Now, those ancient Ga- 
noids which possessed a cranial buckler may, we find, be also 
measured by head-lengths. Thus, in the Coccosteus dectptens, 
the length of the cranial buckler from nape to snout equalled 





os 





* The late Mr. John Thurston. 


[24 THE ASTEROLEPIS: 


one fifth the entire length of the creature from snout tc 
tail. The entire length of the Glyptolepis was equal to 
about five one half times that of its cranial buckler. The 
Pterichthys was formed in nearly the same proportions. The 
Diplopterus was fully seven times the length of its buckler: 
and the Os eolepis from six and a half to seven. In all the 
cranial bucklers of the Asterolepis yet found, the snout is 
wanting. The very fine specimen figured in page 99 (fig. 
28) terminates abruptly at the little plate between the eyes, 
the specimen figured in page 98 (fig. 27) terminates at the 
upper line of the eye. The terminal portion which formed 
the snout is wanting in both, and we thus lack the measure, 
or module, as the architect might say, by which the propor- 
tions of the rest of the creature were regulated. We can, 
however, very nearly approximate to it. A hyoid plate in 
my collection (fig. 45) is, I find, so exactly proportioned in 
size to the cranial buckler, (fig. 28,) that it might have be- 





HYOID PLATE OF THURSO ASTEROLEPIS.* 
(One fifth the nat. size, linear.) 








* The shaded plate, (a,) accidentally presented in this specimen, 
belongs to the upper part of the head. It is the posterior fronts] 
plate F, which half-encircled the eye orbit, (see fig. 29 ;) and I have 
introduced it into the print here, as in none of the other prints, or of 
my other specimens, is its upper surface shown. 


ITS PROBABLE BULK 125 


longed to the same individual ; and by fitting it in its prope~ 
place, and then inaking the necessary allowance for the 
breadth of the nether jaw, which swept two thirds around 
it, and was surmounted by the snout, we ascertain that the 
buckler, when entire, must have been, as nearly as may be, a 
foot in length. If the Asterolepis was formed in the propor- 
tions of the Coccosteus, the buckler (fig. 28) must have be- 
longed to an individual five feet in length; if in the propor- 
tions of the Pterichthys or Glyptolepis, to an individual five 
and a half feet in length ; and if in those of the Diplopterus 
or Osteolepis, to an individual of from six and 1 half to seven 
feet in length. Now I find that the hyoid plate can be in- 
scribed — such is its form —in a semicircle, of which the 
nail-shaped ridge in the middle (if we strike off a minute 
portion of the sharp point, usually wanting in detached speci: 
mens) forms very nearly the radius, and of which the diame: 
ter equals the breadth of the cranial buckler, along a line 
drawn across at a distance from the nape, equal to two thirds 
of the distance between the nape and the eyes. Thus, the 
largest diameter of a hyoid plate which belonged to a cranial 
buckler a foot in length is, I find, equal to seven one quarter 
inches, while the length of its nape somewhat exceeds three five 
eighth inches. The nail of the Stromness specimen measures 
five and a half inches. It must have run along a hyoid plate 
eleven incnes in transverse breadth, and have been associated 
with a cranial buckler eighteen one eighth inches in length ; 
and the Asterolepis to which it belonged must have measured 
from snout to tail, if formed, as it probably was, in the pro- 
portions of its brother Coelacanth the Glyptolepis, eight feet 
three inches ; and if in those of the Diplopterus, from nine 
“eet nine to ten feet six inches. This oldest of Scottish fish 
0 a 


{26 THE ASYEROLEPIS: 


_ this earliest-born of the Ganoids yet known -—- was at least 
as bulky as a large porpoise. 

It wag small, however, compared with specimens of the 
Asterolepis found elsewhere. The hyoid plate figured in 
page 110, (fig. 86,) — a Thurso specimen which I owe to the 
kindness of Mr. Dick, — measures nearly fourteen inches, and 
the cranial buckler of the same individual, fifteen one fourth 
inches, in breadth. The latter, when entire, must have 
measured twenty-three one half inches in length ; and the fish 
to which it belonged, if formed in the proportions of the 
Glyptolepis, ten feet six inches; and if in those of the Dzp- 
lopterus, from twelve feet five to thirteen feet eight inches in. 
length. Did the shield still exist in its original state as & 
buckler of tough, enamel-crusted bone, it might be convertec 
into a Highland target, nearly broad enough to cover the am- 
ple chest of a Rob Roy or Allan M’Aulay, and strong enough 
to dash aside the keenest broadsword. Another hyoid plate 
found by Mr. Dick measures sixteen one half inches in 
breadth ; and a cast in the British Museum, from one of the 
Russian specimens of Professor Asmus, (fig. 46,) twenty-four 
inches. The individual to which this last plate belonged must, 
if built in the shorter proportions, have measured eighteen, 
and if in the longer, twenty-three feet in length. The two 
hyoid plates of the specimen of Holoptychius in the British 
Museum measure but four and a half inches along that trans 
verse line in which the Russian Asterolepis measures two 
feet, and the largest Thurso specimen sixteen inches and a half. 
The maxillary bone of a cod-fish two and a half feet from 
‘gnout to tail measures three inches in length. One of the Rus- 
sian maxillary bones in the possession of Professor Asmus 
measures in length twenty-eight inches. And that space cit 


ITS BULK AND ORGANIZATION. 127 





HYOID PLATE OF RUSSIAN ASTEROLEPIS. 


(One twelfth the natural size, linear.) 


cumscribed by the sweep of the lower jaw which it took, in 
the Russian specimen, a hyoid plate twenty-four inches in 
breadth to fill, could be filled in the twoeand-a-half-feet cod 
by a plate whose breadth equalled but an inch and a half. 
Thus, in the not unimportant circumstance of size, the most 
ancient Ganoids yet known, instead of taking their places, 
agreeably to the demands of the development hypothesis, 
among the sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows of their class. 
took their place among its huge basking sharks, gigantic stur- 
geons, and bulky sword-fishes. They were giants, not dwarfs. 

But what of their organization? Were they fishes low or 
high in the scale ? On this head we can, of course, determine 
merely by the analogies which their structure exhibits to 
that of fishes of the existing period ; and these point in three 
several directions ;— in two of the number, directly on genera 
of the h:gh Ganoid order ; and in the third, on the still higher 
Placoids and Enaliosaurs. No trace of vertebre: has yet been 
found ; and so we infer — lodging, however, a precautionary 
protest, as the evidence is purely negative and therefore im 


128 THE ASTEROLEPIS : 


some degree inconclusive — that the vertebral column of the 
Asterolepis was, like that of the sturgeon, cartilaginous. 
Respecting its external covering, we positively know, as_ has 
been already shown, that, like the Lepidosteus of America and 
the Polypterus of the Nile, it was composed of strong plates 
and scales of solid bone; and, regarding its dentition, that, as 
in these last genera, and even more decidedly than in these, 
it was of the mixed ichthyic-reptilian character,— an outer 
row of thickly-set fish-teeth being backed by an inner row of 
thinly-set reptile-teeth. And its form of coprolite indicates 
the spiral disposition of intestine common to the Rays and 
Sharks of the existing period, and of the Ichthyosauri of the 
Secondary ages. Instead of being, as the development hypo- 
thesis would require, a fish low in its organization, it seems to 
have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian 
families ever called into existence. Had an intelligent being, 
ignorant of what was going on upon earth during the week 
of creation, visited Eden on the morning of the sixth day, he 
would have found in it many of the inferior animals, but no 
trace of man. Had he returned again in the evening, he 
would have seen, installed in the office of keepers of the 
garden, and ruling with no tyrant sway as the humble 
monarchs of its brute inhabitants, two mature human crea- 
tures, perfect in their organization, and arrived at the full 
stature of their race. The entire evidence regarding them, in 
the absence of all such information as that imparted to Adam 
by Milton’s angel, would amount simply to this, that in the 
morning man was not, and that in the evening he was. There, 
of course, could not exist, in the circumstances, a single ap- 
pearance to sanction the belief that the two human creatures 
whom he saw walking together among the trees at sunset had 
been “ developed from infusorial points,’ not created mature. 


ITS BULK AND ORGANIZATION. 29 


The evidencé would, on the contrary, lie all the other way 
And in no degree does the geologic testimony respecting the 
earliest Ganoids differ from what, in the supposed case, would 
be the testimony of Eden regarding the earliest men. Up to 
a certain point in the geologic scale we find that the Ganoids 
are not; and when they at length make their appearance 
upon the stage, they enter large in Hl stature and high ir 
their organizatior | 


ts FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS! 


FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS — UPPER AND LOWER. 


THEIR RECENT HISTORY, ORDER, AND SIZE. 


Bur the system of the Old Red Sandstone represents the 
second, not the first, great period of the world’s history. 
There was a preceding period at least equally extended, per- 
haps greatly more so, represented by the Upper and Lower 
Silurian formations. And what is the testimony of this morn- 
ing period of organic existence, in which, so far as can yet 
be shown, vitality, in the planet which man inhabits, and of 
whose history or productions he knows any thing, was first as- 
sociated with matter? May not the development hypothesis 
find a standing in the system representative of this earliest 
age of creation, which it fails to find in the system of the Old 
Red Sandstone ? | 

It has been confidently asserted, not merely that it may, 
but that it does. Ever since the publication, in 1839, of Sur 
Roderick Murchison’s great work on the Silurian System, it 
had been known that the remains of fishes occur in a bed of 
the ‘“* Ludlow Rock,’ — one of the most modern deposits of 
the Upper Silurian division; and subsequent discoveries 
poth in England and America, had shown that even the base 
of this division has its ichthyic organisms. But for year 


UPPER AND LOWER. 13] 


after year, the lower half of the system,—a division more 
than three thousand feet in thickness,— had failed, though 
there were hands and eyes busy among its deposits, to yield 
any vertebrate remains. During the earlier half of the first 
great period of organic existence, though the polyparia, ra 
diata, articulata, and mollusca, existed, as their remains tes 
tified, by myriads, fish had, it was held, not yet entered upon 
the scene ; and the assertors of the development theory 
founded largely on the presumed fact of their absence. * It 
is still customary,” says the author of the “ Vestiges of Crea- 
tion,” in his volume of “ Explanations,” “to speak of the 
earliest fauna as one of an elevated kind. When rigidly 
examined, it is not found to be so. IN THE FIRST PLACE, IT 
CONTAINS NO FISH. ‘There were seas supporting crustacean 
and molluscan life, but utterly devoid of a class of tenants who 
seem able to live in every example of that element which supports 
meaner creatures. This single fact, that only invertebrated 
animals now lived, is surely in itself a strong proof that, in 
the course of nature, time was necessary for the creation of 
the superior creatures. And if so, it undoubtedly is a power- 
ful evidence of such a theory of development as that which 
I have presented. If not, let me hear an equally plausible 
reason for the great and amazing fact, that seas were for 
numberless ages destitute of fish. I fix my opponents down 
to the consideration of this fact, so that no diversion respect- 
ing high molluscs shall avail them.” And how is this bold 
challenge to be met ? 

Most directly, and after a fashion that at once discomfits 
the challenger. 

It might be rationally enough argued in the case, that the 
author of the ‘ Vestiges” was building greatly more on a 
piece of purely negative evidence, — the presumed absence 


a 


132 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS‘ 


of fish from the Lower Silurian formations, — than purely neg- 
ative evidence is, from its nature as such, suited to bear; that 
only a very few years had passed since it was known that ver- 
tebrate remains occurred in the Upper Silurian, and only a few 
more since they had been detected in the Old Red Sandstone ; 
nay, that within the present century their frequent occur: 
rence in even the Coal Measures was scarce suspected ; and 
that, as his argument, had it been founded twelve years ago 
on the supposed absence of fishes from the Upper Silurian, 
or twenty years ago on the supposed absence of fishes from 
the Old Red Sandstone, would have been quite as plausible 
in reference to its negative data then as in reference to its 
negative data now, so it might now be quite as erroneous as it 
assuredly would have been then. Or it might be urged, that 
the fact of the absence of fish from the Lower Silurians, even 
were it really a fact, would be in no degree less reconcilable 
with the theory of creation by direct act, than with the hypoth- 
esis of gradual development. The fact that Adam did not 
exist during the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth days of 
the introductory week of Scripture narrative, furnishes no 
argument whatever against the fact of his creation on the 
sixth day. And the remark would of course equally apply to 
the non-existence of fishes during the Lower Silurian period, 
had they been really non-existent at the time, and to their 
sudden appearance in that of the Upper. But the objec 
tion admits of a greatly more conclusive answer. ‘I fix my 
opponents down,” says the author of the “ Vestiges,” “to 
the consideration of this fact,” 7. e. that of the absence of 
fishes from the earliest fossiliferous formations. And I, in 
turn, fix you down, I reply, to the consideration of the 
antagonist fact, not negative, but positive, and now, in the 
course of geological disccvery, fully established, that fishes 


UPPER AND LOWER. 133 


were not absent from the earliest fossiliferous formations 
From none of the great geological formations were fishes ab- 
sent, — not even from the formations of the Cambrian divis- 
ion. ‘ The Lower Silurian,” says Sir Roderick Murchison, in 
a communication with which, in 1847, he honored the writer 
of these chapters, “is no longer to be viewed as an inverte- 
brate period; for the Onchus (species not yet decided) has 
been found in the Llandeilo Flags and in the Lower Silurian 
rocks of Bala. In one respect I am gratified by the discovery ; 
for the form is so very like that of the Onchus Murchisoni of 
the Upper Ludlow rock, that it is clear the Silurian system is 
one great natural-history series, as is proved, indeed, by all its 
other organic remains.” It may be mentioned further, in ad- 
dition to this interesting statement, that the Bala spine was 
detected in its calcareous matrix by the geologists of the Goy- 
ernment Survey, and described to Sir Roderick as that of an 
Onchus, by a very competent authority in such matters, — 
Professor Edward Forbes, and that the annunciation of the 
existence of spines of fishes in the Llandeilo Flags we owe tou 
one of the most cautious and practised geologists of the pres- 
ent age, — Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge. 

So much for the fact of the existence of vertebrata in the 
Lower Silurian formations, and the argument founded on their 
presumed absence. Let me now refer — their presence being 
determined —to the tests of size and organization. Were 
these Silurian fishes of a bulk so inconsiderable as in any de- 
gree to sanction the belief that they had been developed shortly 
before from microscopic points? Or were they of a structure 
80 low as to render it probable that their development was at. 
the time incomplete ? Were they, in other words, the embryos 
and foetuses of their class? or did they, on the contrary, rank 
with the higher and larger fishes of the present time ? 

12 


134 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS: 


It is of importance that not only the direct bearing, but 
also the actual amount, of the evidence in this case, should be 
fairly stated. So far as it extends, the testimony is clear’, 
but it does not extend far. All the vertebrate remains 
yet detected in the Silurian System, if we except the de- 
bris of the Upper Ludlow bone-bed, might be sent through 
the Post-Office in a box scarcely twice the size of a copy 
of the “ Vestiges.” The naturalist of an exploring party, 
who, in crossing some unknown lake, had looked down 
over the side of his canoe, and seen a few fish gliding 
through the obscure depths of the water, would be but 
indifferently qualified, from what he had witnessed, to write 
a history of all its fish. Nor, were the some six or eight 
individuals of which he had caught a glimpse to be of 
small size, would it be legitimate for him to infer that only 
small-sized fish lived in the lake; though, were there to be 
some two or three large ones among them, he might safely 
affirm the contrary. Now, the evidence regarding the fishes 
of the Silurian formation very much resembles what that 
of the naturalist would be, in the supposed case, regarding 
the fishes of the unexplored lake ; with, however, this: dif- 
ference, that as the deposits of the ancient system in which 
hey occur have been examined for years in various parts of 
he world, and all its characteristic organisms, save the 
chtnyic ones, found in great abundance and fine keeping, 
we may conclude that the fish of the period were compara- 
tively few. The paleontologist, so far as the question of 
number is involved, is in the circumstances, not of the natu- 
ralist who has only once crossed the unknown lake, but of 
the angler who, day after day, casts his line into some inland 
sea abounding in shell-fish and crustacea, and, after the lapse 
of months can scarce detect a nibble, and after the lapse of 


— 


UPPER AND LOWER. 135 


years, can reckon up all the fish which he has caught as cou. 
siderably under a score. ‘The existence of this great division 
of the animal kingdom, like that of the earlier reptiles during 
the Carboniferous period, did not form a prominent char- 
acteristic of those ages of the earth’s history in which they 
began to be. 

The earliest discovered vertebral remains of the system — 
those of the Upper Ludlow rock — were found in digging the 
foundations of a house at Ludford, on the confines of Shrop- 
shire, and submitted, in 1838, by Sir Roderick Murchison to 
Agassiz, through the late Dr. Malcolmson of Madras. I 
used at the time to correspond on geological subjects with 
Dr. Malcolmson,—an accomplished geologist and a good 
man, too early lost to science and his friends, — and still re- 
member the interest which attached on this occasion to his 
communication bearing the Paris post-mark, from which | 
learned for the first time that there existed ichthyic fragments 
greatly older than even the ichthyolites of the Lower Old 
Red Sandstone, and which made me acquainted with Agas- 
siz’s earliest formed decision regarding them. Though ex- 
isting in an exceedingly fragmentary condition, —for the 
materials of the thin dark-colored layer in which they had 
lain seemed as if they had been triturated in a mortar, — 
the ichthyologist succeeded in erecting them into six genera ; 
though it may be very possible,—as some of these were 
formed for the reception of detached spines, and others for 
the reception of detached teeth,— that, as in the case of 
Dipterus and Asterolepis, the fragments of but a single 
genus may have been multiplied into two genera or more 
And minute scale-like markings, which mingled with the gen- 
eral mass, and were at first regarded as the impressions of 
treni scales, have been since recognized as of the same char- 


136 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS. 


acter with the scale-like markings of the Seraphim of Forfar- 
shire, a huge crustacean. Even admitting, however, that a 
set of teeth and spines, with perhaps the shagreen points 
represented in page 54, fig. 2, b, in addition, may have all 
belonged to but a single species of fish, there seem to be ma- 
terials enough, among the remain: found, for the erection of 
two species more. And we have evidence that at least two 
of the three kinds were fishes of the Placoid order, (Onshus 
Murchisoni and Onchus tenuistriatus,) and— as the sup- 
posed scales must be given up—no good evidence that the 
other kind was not. The ichthyic remains of the Silurian 
System next discovered were first introduced to the notice of 
geologists by Professor Phillips, at the meeting of the British 
Association in 1842.* They occurred, he stated, in a quarry 
near Hales End, at the base of the Upper Ludlow rock, im 


ee 


* «Mr. Phillips proceeded to describe some remains of a small 
fish, resembling the Chetracanthus of the Old Red Sandstone, scales 
and spines of which he had found in a quarry at Hales End, on 
the western side of the Malverns. The section presented beds of 
the Old Red Sandstone inclined to the west; beneath these were 
arenaceous beds of a lighter color, forming the junction with Silurian 
shales; these, again, passing on to calcareous beds in the lower part 
of the quarry, containing the corals and shells of the Aymestry 
Limestone, of their agreement with which stronger evidence might 
be obtained elsewhere. He had found none of these scales in 
the junction beds or in the Upper Ludlow Shales; but about sixty 
or one hundred feet lower, just above the Aymestry Limestone, his 
attention had been attracted to discolored spots on the surface of the 
beds, which, upon microscopic examination, proved to be the minute 
scales and spines before mentioned. These remains were only 
apparent on the surface, whilst the ‘fish-bed’ of the Upper Lud- 
low rock, as i+ usually occurred, was an inch thick, consisting of in- 
numerable small teeth and spines.” — Report, in “ Atheneum” for 
1842, of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Meeting of British Association, 
‘Manchester ») 


—_ 


UPPER AND LOWER. 137 


mediately over the Aymestry Limestone, and were so ex: 
ceedingly diminutive, that they appeared to the naked eye 
as mere discolored spots; but resolved under the micro- 
scope into scattered groupes of minute spines, like those of 
the Cheiracanthus, with what seemed to be still more minute 
scales, or, perhaps, — what in such circumstances could scarce 
be distinguished from scales, — shagreen points of the scale- 
like type. The next ichthyic organism detected in the Silu- 
rian rocks occurred in the Wenlock Limestone, a consider: 
ably lower and older deposit, and was first described in the 
“ Edinburgh Review” for 1845 by a vigorous writer and 
masterly geologist, (generally understood to be Professor 
Sedgwick of Cambridge,) as “a characteristic portion of a 
fish undoubtedly belonging to the Cestraciont family of the 
Placoid order.” In the “ American Journal of Science” for 
1846, Professor Silliman figured, from a work of the States’ 
Surveyors, the defensive spine of a Placoid found in the 
Onondago Limestone of New York, —a rock which occurs 
near the base of the Upper Silurian System, as developed in 
the western world; * and in the same passage he made ref- 
erence to a mutilated spine detected in a still lower American 
deposit, —the Oriskany Sandstone. In the Geological 
Journal for 1847, it was announced by Professor Sedgwick, 


ee 


* “This is the lowest position” (that of the Onondago Lime- 
stone) “in the State of New York in which any remains have 
been found higher in the scale of organized beings than Crustacea, 
with the exception of an imperfectly preserved fish-bone discovered 
by Hallin the Oriskany Sandstone. That specimen, together with 
the defensive fish-bone found in this part of the New York system, 
furnishes evidences of the existence of animals belonging to the 
elass vertebrata during the deposition of the middle part of the 
protoznic strata.” — American Journal of Science and Arts Sor 1846, 


p. 63. 
12 * 


138 


SHOOR NVIUNTIIS AAMOT *SNOOHU NVIUATIS UWAdd 


‘BHOOH NVIEEANVO 


FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS: 


U Fish, 1838 
Taio, (Murchison.) 
Fish, 1842, 
Aymestry (Phillips.) 
Limestone. 
Lower 
Ludlow. 
Wenlock Fish, 1849, 
Limestone. (Sedgwick.) 
Fish, 1846, 
(Silliman.) 
Wenlock Shale. Fish, 1847. 
(Phillips.) 
Caradoc 


Sandstone, &c. 


Fish, 1847, 
Llandeilo (Sedgwick.) 
Flags, &c. 
Plynlimmon 
Group. 
_ Bala Fish 1847, 
Limestone. (Geologists of 
Government 
Survey.) 
Snowdon 
Groxp. 
Fucoids. 





that he had found “ de 
fences of fishes” in the 
Upper Llandeilo Flags, 
and by Sir Roderick 
Murchison, that the “ de- 
fence of an Onchus” had 
been detected by the 
geologists of the Gov- 
ernment survey, in the 
Limestone near Bala. 
Sir Roderick referred in 
the same number to the 
remains of a fish found 
by Professor Phillips in 
the Wenlock Shale. And 
such, up to the pres- 
ent time, is the actual 
amount of the evidence 
with which we have to 
deal, and the dates of 
its piecemeal production. 
Let us next consider the 
order of its occurrence 
in the geologic scale. 
The better marked 
sub-divisions of the Si- 
lurian System, as de- 
scribed in the great 
work specially devoted 
to it, may be regarded as 
seven in number. An 
eighth has since been 


ii i i 


UPPER AND LOWER 135 


added, by the transference of the Tilestones from the lower 
part of the Old Red Sandstone group, to the upper part of the 
Silurian group underneath; but in order the better to show 
how ichthyic discovery has in its slow course penetrated into 
the depths, I shall retain the divisions recognized as those of 
the system when that course began. The highest or most 
modern Silurian deposit, then, (No. 1 of the accompanying 
diagram,) is the Upper Ludlow Rock ; and it is in the superior 
strata of this division that the bone-bed discovered in 1838 
occurs; while the exceedingly minute vertebrate remains 
described by Professor Phillips in 1842 occur in its base. 
The division next in the descending order is the Aymestry 
Limestone, (No. 2;) the next (No. 3) the Lower Ludlow 
rock ; then (No. 4) the Wenlock or Dudley Limestone occurs; 
and then, last and oldest deposit of the Upper Silurian forma- 
tion, the Wenlock shale, (No. 5.) It is in the fourth, or Wen- 
lock Limestone division, that the defensive spine described in 
the “* Edinburgh Review” for 1845 as the oldest vertebrate 
organism known at the time, was found;* while the verte- 
brate organism found by Professor Phillips belongs to the fifth, 
or base deposit of the Upper Silurian. F urther, the American 
spines of Onondago and Oriskany, described in 1846, occurred 
in rocks deemed contemporary with those of the Wenlock 
division. We next cross the line which separates the base of 
the Upper from the top of the Lower Silurian deposits, and 
find a great arenaceous formation, (No. 6,) known as the 
Caradoc Sandstones; while the Llandeilo Flags, (No. 7,) the 
formation upon which the sandstones rest, compose, according 
to the sections of Sir Roderick, published in 1839, the lowest 





* «The shales alternating with the Wenlock Limestone.” (Edinburgh 
Review ) 


140 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS: 


deposit of the Lower Silurian rocks. And it is in the upper 
part of this lowest member of the system that the ichthyic 
defences, announced in 1847 by Professor Sedgwick, occur. 
Vertebrate remains have now been detected in the same 
relative position in the seventh and most ancient member of the 
system, that they were found to occupy in its first and most 
modern member ten years ago. But this is not all. Beneath 
the Lower Silurian division there occur vast fossiliferous 
deposits, to which the name “‘ Cambrian System” was given, 
merely provisionally, by Sir Roderick, but which Professor 
Sedgwick still retains as representative of a distinct geologic 
period; and it is in these, greatly below the Lower Silurian 
base line, as drawn in 1839, that the Bala Limestones 
occur. The Plynlimmon rocks (a)—a series of conglom- 
erate, grauwacke, and slate beds, several thousand yards in 
thickness — intervene between the Llandeilo Flags and the 
Limestones of Bala, (b.) And, of consequence, the defensive 
spine of the Onchus, announced in 1847 as detected in these 
limestones by the geologists of the Government Survey, must 
have formed part of a fish that perished many ages ere the 
oldest of the Lower Silurian formations began to be de- 
posited. | 

Let us now, after this survey of both the amount of our 
materials, and the order and time of their occurrence, pass on 
to the question of size, as already stated. Did the ichthyie 
remains of the Silurian System, hitherto examined and 
described, belong to large or to small fishes? The question 
cannot be altogether so conclusively answered as in the case 
of those Ganoids of the Lower Old Red Sandstone whose 
dermal skeletons indicate their original dimensions and form. 
in fishes of the Placoid order, such as the Sharks and Rays, 
the dermal skeleton is greatly less continuous and persisten. 


~ UPPER AND LOWER. 141 


than in such Ganoids as the Dipterians and Ceelacanths ; and 
when their remains occur in the fossil state, we can reason, in 
most instances, regarding the bulk of the individuals of which 
they formed part, merely from that of detached teeth or spines. 
whose proportion to the entire size of the animals that bore 
them cannot be strictly determined. We can, indeed, do little 
more than infer, that though a large Placoid may haye been 
armed with but small spines or teeth, a small Placoid could 
not have borne very large ones. And to this Placoid order all 
the Silurian fish, from the Aymestry Limestone to the Cam- 
brian deposits of Bala inclusive, unequivocally belong. Nor, 
as has been already said, is there sufficient evidence to show 
that any of the ichthyic remains of the Upper Ludlow rocks 
do not belong to it. It is peculiarly the order of the system. 
The Ludlow bone-bed contains not only defensive spines, but 
also teeth, fragments of jaws, and shagreen points; whereas, 
in all the inferior deposits which yield any trace of the ver- 
‘ebrata, the remains are those of defensive spines exclusively, 
Let us, then, take the defensive spine as the part on which to 
found our comparison. 

One of the best marked Placoids of the Upper Ludlow 
bone-bed is that Onchus Murchisoni to which the distinguished 
geologist whose name it bears refers, in his communication, 
as so nearly resembling the oldest Placoid yet known, — that 
of the Bala Limestone. And the living fishes with which the 
Onchus Murchisoni must be compared, says Agassiz, though 
“the affinity,” he adds, “ may be rather distant,” are those 
of the genera * Cestracion, Centrina, and Spinax.” I have 
placed before me a specimen of recent Spinaa, of a species 
well known to all my readers on the sea-coast, the Spinax 
Acanthias, or common dog-fish, so little a favorite with our 
fishermen. It measnres exactly two feet three mches in 


142 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS: 


length; ana of the defensive spines of its two dorsals, — 
these spear-like thorns on the creature’s back immediately in 
advance of the fins, which so frequently wound the fisher’s 
hand,— the anterior and smaller measures, from base to 
point, an inch and a half, and the posterior and larger, two 
inches. I have also placed before me a specimen of Cestra- 
cion Phillippi, (the Port Jackson Shark,) a fish now recog- 
rized as the truest existing analogue of the Silurian Placoids. 
It measures twenty-two three fourth inches in length, and is 
furnished, like Spinaxz, with two dorsal spines, of which the 
anterior and larger measures from base to point one one half 
inch, and the posterior and smaller, one one fifth inch. But 
the defensive spine of the Onchus Murchisoni, as exhibited 
in one of the Ludlow specimens, measures, though mutilated 
at both ends, three inches and five eighth parts in length. 
Even though existing but as a fragment, it is as such nearly 
twice the length of the largest spine of the dog-fish, unmuti- 
lated and entire, and considerably more than twice the length 
of the largest spine of the Port Jackson Shark. The spines 
detected by Professor Phillips, in an inferior stratum of the 
same upper deposit, were, as has been shown, of microscopic 
minuteness ; and when they seemed to rest on the extreme 
horizon of ichthyic existence as the most ancient remains of 
their kind, the author of the “ Vestiges ” availed himself of the 
fact. He regarded the little creatures to which they had 
belonged as the foetal embryos of their class, or — to employ 
the language of the Edinburgh Reviewer — as “ the tokens 
of Nature’s first and half-abortive efforts to make fish out of 
the lower animals.” From the latter editions of his work, 
the paragraph to which the Reviewer refers has, I find, been 
expunged; for the horizon has greatly extended, and what 
seemed to be its line of extreme distance has travelled into the 


UPPER AND LOWER, «43 


middle of the prospect. But that the passage should have 
at all existed is a not uninstructive c rcumstance, and shows 
how unsafe it is, in more than external nature, to regard 
the line at which, for the time, the landscape closes, and 
heaven and earth seem to meet, as in reality the world’s end. 
The Wenlock spine, though certainly not microscopic, is, 
am informed by Sir Philip Egerton, of but small size ; where- 
as the contemporary spine of the Onondago Limestone, 
though comparatively more a fragment than the spine of the 
Upper Ludlow Onchus, — for it measures only three inches in 
length, — is at least five times as bulky as the largest spine of 





a. Posterior Spine of Spinax Acanthias. b. Fragment of Onondago Spine 


“a 


(Natural Size.) 


Spinax Acanthias. Representing one of the massier fishes 
disporting amid the some four or five small ones, of which 
in my illustration, the naturalist catches a glimpse in ford: 
ing the unknown lake, it at least serves to show that all the 
Silurian ichthyolites must not be described as small, seeing 
that not only might many of its undetected fish have been 
large, but that some of those which have been detected were 
actually so. Another American spine, of nearly the same 


144 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS. 


formation, —for it occurs in a limestone, varying from twenty 
« seventy feet in thickness, which immediately overlies that 
of the Onondago deposit, though still more fragmentary than 
the first, for its length is only two three eighth inches, — 
maintains throughout a nearly equal thickness, —a circum: 
stance in itself indicative of considerable size ; and in post 
tive bulk it almost rivals the Onondago one. Of the Lower 
Silurian and Bala fishes no descriptions or figures have yet 
appeared. And such, up to the present time, is the testi- 
mony derived from this department of Geology, so far as | 
have been able to determine it, regarding the size of the an- 
cient Silurian vertebrata. ‘ No organism,” says Professor 
Oken, “ is, nor ever has one been, created, which is not mi- 
croscopic.” The Professor’s pupils and abettors, the assert: 
ors of the development hypothesis, appeal to the geologica 
evidence as‘altogether on their side in the case; and straight 
way a few witnesses enter court. But, lo! among the ex- 
pected dwarfs, there appear individuals of more than the 
average bulk and stature. 

Still, however, the question of organization remains. Did 
these ancient Placoid fishes stand high or low in the scale? 
According to the poet, “ What can we reason but from what 
we know?” We are acquainted with the Placoid fishes of 
the present time ; and from these only, taking analogy as our 
guide, can we form any judgment regarding the rank and 
standing of their predecessors, the Placoids of the geologic 
periods. But the consideration of this question, as it is 
specially one on which the later assertors of. the develop- 
ment hypothesis concentrate themselves, I must, to secure the 
space necessary for its discussion, defer till my next chapter. 
Meanwhile, I am conscious I owe an apology to the reader for 
what he must deem tedious minuteness of description, and a 


UPPER AND LOWER. 145 


too prolix amplitude of statement. It is only by representing 
things as they actually are, and in the true order of their 
occurrence, that the effect of the partially selected facts and 
exaggerated descriptions of the Lamarckian can be adequate- 
lymet. True, the disadvantages of the more sober mode are 
unavoidably great. He who feels himself at liberty to arrange 
his collected shells, corals, and fish-bones, into artistically de- 
signed figures, and to select only the pretty ones, will be of 
course able to make of them a much finer show than he who 
is necessitated to represent them in the order and numerical 
proportions in which they occur on some pebbly beach washed 
by the sea. And such is the advantage, in a literary point of 
view, of the ingenious theorist, who, in making figures of his 
geological facts, takes no more of them than suits his purpose, 
over the man who has to communicate the facts as he finds 
them. But the homelier mode is the true one. ‘“ Could we 
obtain,” says a distinguished metaphysician, “a distinct and full 
history of all that has passed in the mind of a child, from the 
beginning of life and sensation till it grows up to the use of 
reason, — how its infant faculties began to work, and how 
they brought forth and ripened all the various notions, opin- 
ions, and sentiments which we find in ourselves when we 
come to be capable of reflection, —this would be a treasure 
of natural history which would probably give more light into 
the human faculties than all the systems of philosophers about 
them since the beginning of the world. Butit is in vain,” he 
adds, “‘ to wish for what nature has not put within the reach 
of our power.” In like manner, could we obtain, it may be 
remarked, a full and distinct account of a single class of the 
animal kingdom, from its first appearance till the present 
time, “ this would be a treasure of natural history which would 
cast more light” on the origin of living existences, and the 
13 


146 FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS. 


true economy of creation, than all the theories of all the phi- 
losophers ‘+ since the beginning of the world.” And in order 
to approximate to such a history as nearly as possible, — and 
it does seem possible to approximate near enough ta 
substantiate the true readings of the volume, and to correct the 
false ones, — it is nee ssary that the real vestiges of crea 
tion should be carefully investigated, and their order of suc - 
cession ascertained. 


HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS. 147 


HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS. -- OBJECTIONS 
CONSIDERED 


WE have seen that some of the Silurian Placoids were large 
of size: the question still remains, Were they high in intel 
ligence and organization ? 

The Edinburgh Reviewer, in contending with the author of 
the “ Vestiges ” replies in the affirmative, by claiming for 
them the first place among fishes. ‘“ Taking into account,” 
he says, “the brain and the whole nervous, circulating, and 
generative systems, they stand at the highest point of a nat- 
ural ascending scale.” They are fishes, he again remarks, 
that rank among “ the very highest types of their class.” 

“The fishes of this early age, aud of all other ages pre- 
vious to the Chalk,” says his antayonist, in reply, “are, for 
the most part, cartilaginous. The cartilaginous fishes — 
Chondropterygii of Cuvier —are placed by that naturalist as 
a second series in his descending scale ; being, however, he 
says, ‘in some measure parallel to the first.’ How far this is 
different from their being the highest types of the fish class, 
need not be largely insisted upon. Linneus, again, was so 
impressed by the low characters of many of this order, that 
he actually ranked ther with worms. Some of toe cartila- 
ginous fishes, nevertheless, have certain peculiar features of 
organization, chiefly connected with reproduction in which 


148 OBJECTIONS 


they excel other fish; but such features are partly partaken 
of by families in inferior sub-kingdoms, showing that they 
cannot truly be regarded as marks of grade in their owa 
class. When we look to the great fundamental characters 
particularly to the framework for the attachment of the 
muscles, what do we find ?— why, that of these Placcids, —- 
‘the highest types of their class, — it is barely pos&ble to 
establish their being vertebrata at all, the back-bone having 
generally been too slight for preservation, although the ver- 
tebral columns of later fossil fishes are as entire as those 
of any other animals. In many of them traces can be ob- 
served of the muscles having been attached to the external 
plates, strikingly indicating their low grade as vertebrate 
animals. The Edinburgh Reviewer ‘highest types of thei 
class’ are in reality a separate series of that class, generally 
inferior, taking the leading features of organization of struc- 
ture as a criterion, but when details of organization are re- 
garded, stretching farther, both downward and upward, than 
the other series; so that, looking at one extremity, we are as 
much entitled to call them the lowest, as the Reviewer, look 
ing at another extremity, is to call them the ‘ highest of 
their class.’ Of the general inferiority there can be no room 
for doubt. Their cartilaginous structure is, in the first place, 
analogous to the embryonic state of vertebrated animals in 
general. The maxillary and intermaxillary bones are in 
them rudimental. Their tails are finned on the under side 
ony, —an admitted feature of the salmon in an embryonic 
stage; and the mouth is placed on the under side of the 
head, — also a mean and embryonic feature of structure. 
These characters are essential and important, whatever the 
Edinburgh Reviewer may say to the contrary; they are the 
characters which, above all, 1 am chiefly concerned in look. 


CONSIDERED. 149 


ing to, for they are features of embryonic progress, and em. 
bryonic progress is the grand key to the tneory of develop- 
ment.” : 

Such is the ingenious piece of special pleading which this 
most popular of the Lamarckians directs against the standing 
and organization of the earlier fishes. Let us examine it 
somewhat in detail, and see whether the slight admixture of 
truth which it contains serves to do aught more than to render 
current, like the gilding of a counterfeit guinea spread over 
the base metal, the amount of error which lies beneath. J 
know not a better example than that which it furnishes, of 
the entanglement and perplexity which the meshes of an arti- 
ficial classification, when converted, in argumentative pro 
cesses, ito symbols and abstractions, are sure to involve 
subjects simple enough in themselves. 

Fishes, according to the classification of a preponderating 
majority of the ichthyologists that have flourished from the 
earliest times down to those of Agassiz, have been divided 
into two great series, the Ordinary or osseous, and the Chon- 
dropterygit or cartilaginous. And these two divisions of the 
class, instead of being ranged consecutively in a continuous 
line, the one in advance of the other, have been ranged 
in two parallel lines, the one directly abreast of the other 
There is this further peculiarity in the arrangement. that 
the line of the cartilaginous series, from the circumstance 
that some of its families rise higher and some sink lower 
in the scale than any of the ordinary fishes, outflanks the 
array of the osseous series at both ends. The front which: 
it presents contains fewer genera and species than that of 
the osseous division; but, like the front of an army drawn 
out in single file, it extends along a greater length of ground 


And to this long-fronted series of the cartilaginous, or, r.- 
13 * 


150 OBJECTIONS 


cording to Cuvier, chondropterygian fishes, the Placoid families 
of Agassiz belong, — among the rest, the Placoids of the Silu- 
rian formations, Upper and Lower. But though all the Pla- 
coids of this latter naturalist be cartilaginous fishes, all carti- 
laginous fishes are not Placoids. The Sturionide are cartila- 
ginous, and are, as such, ranked by Cuvier among the Chon- 
dropterygii, whereas Agassiz places them in hisGanoid order. 
Many of the extinct fishes, too, such as the Acanthodet, Dip- 
teride, Cephalaspide, were, as we have seen, cartilaginous 
in their internal framework, and yet true Ganoids notwith- 
standing. The principle of Agassiz’s classification wholly 
differs from that of Cuvier and the older ichthyologists ; for 
it is a classification founded, not on the character of the 
internal but on that of the cuticular or dermal skeleton. And 
while to the geologist it possesses great and obvious advan- 
tages over every other, —for of the earlier fishes very little 
more than the cuticular skeleton survives, — it has this further 
recommendation to the naturalist, that, (in so far at least as 
its author has been true to his own principles,) instead of anom- 
alously uniting the highest and lowest specimens of their 
class, — the fishes that most nearly approximate to the reptiles 
on the one hand, and the fishes that sink furthest towards the 
worms on the other, — it gathers into cne consistent order all 
the individuals of the higher type, distinguished above their 
fellows by their development of brain, the extensive range 
of their instincts, and the perfection of their generative sys- 
tems. Further, the history of animal existences, as re- 
corded in the sedimentary rocks of our planet, reads a recoim- 
mendation of this scheme of classification which it extends 
to no other. We find that in the progress of creation the 
fishes began to be by groupes and septs, arranged according to 
be principle on which it erects its orders. The Placoids 


CONSIDERED. 15] 


came first, the Ganoids succeeded them, and the Ctenvids and 
Cycloids brought up the rear. The march has been marshalled 
according to an appointed programme, the order of whicn if 
‘8 peculiarly the merit of Agassiz to have ascertained. 

Now, may I request the reader to mark, in the first place 
that what we have specially to deal with at the present stage 
of the atgument are the Placoid fishes of the Silurian forma 
tions, Upper and Lower. May I ask him to take note, in the 
second, that the long-fronted ‘chondropterygian series of 
Cuvier, though it includes, as has already been said, the 
Placoid order of Agassiz, —just as the red-blooded division 
‘of animals includes the bimana and quadrumana,—is no 
more to be regarded as identical with the Placoids, than the 
red-blooded animals are to be regarded as identical with the 
apes or with the human family. It simply includes them in 
the character of one of the three great divisions into which it 
has been separated, — the division ranged, if I may so express 
myself, on the extreme right of the line; its middle portion, 
or main body, being composed of the Sturiones, a family on 
the general level of the osseous fishes ; while, ranged on the 
extreme left, we find the low division of the Suctorit, 7. e. 
Cyclostomi, or Lampreys. But with the middle and lower 
divisions we have at present nothing to do; for of neither 
of them, whether Sturiones or Suctorii, does the Silurian 
System exhibit a trace. Further be it remarked, thai the 
scheme of classification which gives an abstract standing to 
the Chondropterygit, is in itself merely a certain perce 3ption 
of resemblance which existed in certain minds, having carti- 
lage for its general idea; just as another certain perception 
of resemblance in one other certain mind had cuticular 
skeleton for its general idea, and as yet another perception 
of resemblance in yet other certain minds had red blood for 


152 OBJECTIONS 


iis general idea. As shown by the disparities which obtain 
among the section which the scheme serves to separate from 
the others, it no more determines rank or standing than that 
greatly more ancient scheme of classification into “ ring- 
streaked and spotted,’ which served to distinguish the flocks 
of the patriarch Jacob from those of Laban his father-in-law, 
but which did not distinguish goats from sheep, nor sheep from 
cattle. 

The effect of introducing, after this manner, generalizations 
made altogether irrespective of rank, and avowedly without 
reference to it, into what are inherently and specifically ques- 
tions of rank, admits of a simple illustration. 

Let us suppose that it was not with the standing of the 
Silurian Placoids that we had to deal, but with that of the 
mammals of the recent period, including the quadrumana, and 
even the bimana, and that we had ventured to describe them, 
m the words of the Edinburgh Reviewer, as “the very 
highest types of their class.”” What would be thought of the 
reasoner who, in challenging the justice of the estimate, 
would argue that these creatures, men as well as monkeys, 
belonged simply to that division of red-blooded animals which 
includes, with the bimana and quadruniana, the frog, the gud- 
geon, and the earthworm ? — a division, he might add, ‘which, 
when details of organization are regarded, stretches farther, 
both downward and upward,” than that division of the white- 
blooded animals to which the crab, the spider, the cuttle-fish, 
and the dragon fly belong ; “‘ so that, looking at one extremity, 
uny one is as much entitled to call the red-blooded animals 
the lowest division, as any other, locking at another ex- 
tremity, is to call them the highest division, of animals.” 
What, it might well be asked in reply, has the earthworm, 
with its red blood to do in a question respecting the place 


CONSIDERED. 153 


and standing uf the bimana? Or what, in the parallel case, 
nave the Suctorii—the worms of Linnzeus—to do in a 
question respecting the place and standing of the real 
Placoids? True it is that, according to one principle of 
classification, now grown somewhat obsolete, men and earth- 
worms are equally red-blooded animals; true it is that, 
according to another principle of classification, the Placoids 
of Agassiz and the cartilaginous worms of Linnzus are equaily 
Chondropterygit. The bimana and the earthworm have their 
red blood in common ; the glutinous hag and the true Placoids 
have as certainly their internal cartilage in common; and 
if the fact of the red blood of the worm lowers in no degree 
the rank of the bimana, then, on the same principle, the 
fact of the internal cartilage of the glutinous hag cannot 
possibly detract from the standing of the true Placoid. In 
both cases they are creatures that entirely differ, — the earth- 
worms from the bimana, and the cartilaginous worms from 
the Placoids; and the classification which tags them together, 
whether it be that of Aristotle or that of Cuvier, cannot 
be converted into a sort of minus quantity, of force enough 
to detract from the value and standing of the bimana in 
the one case, or of the true Placoids in the other. It is 
in no degree derogatory to the human family that earth- 
worms possess red blood; it is in no degree derogatory to 
the true Placoids that the Suctorii possess cartilaginous 
skeletons. 

Let the reader now mark the use which has been made, by 
the author of the “ Vestiges,” of the name and authority of 
Linneus. “ Linnzus,” he states, “ was so impressed by the 
low character of many of this order, (the Chondropterygii,) 
that he actually ranked them with worms.” Now, what is the 
fact here? Simply that Linnewus had no such general order 


154 OBJECTIONS 


as the Uhonaropterygti in his eye at all. Though chiefly 
remarkable as a naturalist for the artificialness of his classifi- 
cations, his estimate of the cartilaginous fishes was remarkable 
— though carried too far in its extremes, and in some degree 
founded in error — for an opposite quality. It was an estimate 
formed, in the main, on a natural basis. Instead of taking 
their cartilaginous skeleton into account, he looked chiefly at 
their standing as animals; and, struck with that extent of front 
which they present, and with both their superiority on the ex: 
treme right, and their inferiority on the extreme left, to the 
ordinary fishes, he erected them into two separate orders, the 
one lower and the other higher than the members of the osse- 
ous line. And so far was he from regarding the true Placoids 
— those Chondropterygii which to an internal skeleton of 
cartilage add external plates, points, or spines of bone —as 
tow in the scale, that he actually raised them above fishes alto- 
gether, by erecting them into an order of reptiles, — the order 
Amphibia Nantes. Surely, if the name of Linnzus was to be 
introduced into this controversy at all, it ought to have been 
in connection with ¢his special fact; seeing that the point to 
be determined in the question under discussion is simply the 
place and standing of that very order which the naturalist 
rated so high, — not the place and standing of the order which 
he degraded. It so happens that there is one of the Chon- 
dropterygii which, so far from being a true Placoid, does not 
possess a single osseous plate, point, or spine: it is a worm 
like creature, without eyes, without movable Jaws, without 
vertebral joints, without scales, always enveloped in slime, 
and greatly abhorred by our Scotch boatmen of the Moray 
Frith, who hold that it burrows, like the grave-worm, in the 
decaying bodies of the dead. And this creature, “ the 
glutinous hag,” or, according to north-country fishermen, the 


CONSIDERED. 155 


‘ camper-eel,”” or “ poison-ramper,” was regarded by Lin- 
neus as belonging, not to the class of fishes, but to the 
Vermes. Now, this is the special fact with which, in the 
development controversy, the author of the “ Vestiges ” con- 
nects the name of the Swedish naturalist! All the fish of 
the Silurian System belonged to that true Placoid order which 
Linnzus, impressed by its high standing, erected into an 
order, not of worms, but of reptiles. He elevated A, the 
true Placoid, while he degraded B, the glutinous hag. But it 
was necessary to the argument of the author of the “ Ves- 
tiges ” that the earliest existing fish should be represented as 
fish low in the scale; and so he has cited the name and 
authority of Linnzus in its bearing against the glutinous hag 
B, as if it had borne against the standing of the true Placoid 
A. The Patagonians are the tallest and bulkiest men in the 
world, whereas their neighbors the Fuegians are a slim and 
diminutive race. And if, in some controversy raised regard- 
ing the real size of the more gigantic tribe, they were to be 
described as the “ very tallest types of their class,” any state- 
ment in reply, to the effect that some trustworthy voyager 
had examined certain races of the extreme south of America, 
and had found that they were both short and thin, would be 
neither relevant in its facts nor legitimate in its bearing. But 
if the controversialist who thus strove to strengthen his case 
by the voyager’s authority, was at the same time fully aware 
that the voyager had seen not only the diminutive Fuegians, 
but also the gigantic Patagonians, and that he had described 
these last as very gigantic indeed, the introduction of the 
statement regarding the smaller race, when he wholly sank 
the statement regarding the larger, would be not merely very 
irrelevant in the circumstances, but also very unfair. Such, 
however, is the style of statement to which the author of the 


156 PROGRESS 


‘* Vestiges ” has (I trust inadvertently) resorted in this con 
troversy. 

It is not uninstructive to mark how slowly and gradually 
the naturalists have been groping their way to a right classifi 
cation in the ichthyic department of their science, and how it 
has been that identical perception of resemblance, having 
sqrtilage for its general idea, to which the author of the 


> attaches so much importance, that has served 


‘* Vestiges ” 
mainly to retard their progress. Not a few of the more dis- 
tinguished among their number deemed it too important a 
distinction to be regarded as merely secondary ; and so long 
as it was retained as a primary characteristic, the fishes failed 
to range themselves in the natural order ;— dissimilar tribes 
were brought into close neighborhood, while tribes nearly 
allied were widely separated. It failed, as has been shown, 
to influence Linnzus; and though he no doubt pressed his 
peculiar views too far when he degraded the glutinous hag 
into a worm, and elevated the Sharks and Rays into reptiles, 
it is certainly worthy of remark, that, in the scheme of class- 
ification which is now regarded as the most natural, — that 
of Professor Muller, modified by Professor Owen,— the 
ichthyic worms of the Swede are placed in the first and 
lowest order of fishes, — the Dermopteri, — and the greater 
part of his ichthyic reptiles, in the eleventh and highest,— 
the Plagiostomi. Cuvier yielded, as has been shown, to the 
sdea of resemblance founded on the material of the ichthyic 
framework, and so ranged his fishes into two parallel lines, 
Professer Oken, after first enunciating as law that ‘ the char- 
acteristic organ of fishes is the osseous system,” confessed 


> which attaches to the question of skel- 


the * great difficulty ” 
etal * texture or substance,” and finally gave up the distinction 


founded on it as obstinately irreducible to the purposes of a 


OF ICHTHYIC CLASSIFICATION. 157 


natural classification. ‘* The cartilaginous fishes,” he says, ‘* ap» 
pear to belong to each other, and are also usually arranged to- 
gether ; yet amongst them we find those species, such as the 
Lampreys, which obviously occupy the lowest grade of all 
fishes, while the Sharks and Rays remind us of the Reptilia.” 
And so, sinking the consideration of texture altogether, he 
olaced the family of the Lamprey, including the glutinous hag, 
at the bottom of the scale, and the Sharks and Rays at the top. 
Agassiz’s system, peculiarly his own, has had the rare merit 
as [ have shown, of furnishing a key to the history of the 
fish in its several dynasties, which we may in vain seek in 
any other. His divisions,— if, retaining his strongly-marked 
Placoids and Ganoids,as orders stamped in the mint of nature, 
we throw his perhaps less obviously divisible Cteuoids and Cy- 
cloids into ore order, — the corneous_ or horn-covered, — are 
scarcely less representative of periods than those great classes 
of the vertebrata, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, which 
we find not less regularly ranged in their order of succession 
in the geologic record than in the “ Animal Kingdom” of 
Cuvier, — a shrewd corroboration, in both cases, I am dis. 
posed to th’ik, of the rectitude of the arrangement. What 
seems to be the special defect of his system is, that having 
erected his four orders, and then finding a certain number of 
residuary families that, on his principle of cuticular character, 
stubbornly refused to fall into any determinate place, he dis- 
tributed them among the others, with reference chiefly to the 
totally distinct princip'e of Cuvier. Thus the Suctorii, soft, 
smooth, slimy-skinned fishes, that do not possess a single 
plavoid character, and are not true Placoids, he has yet placed 
in his Placoid order, influenced, apparently, by the “ per- 
ception of resemblance that has cartilage for its central 


‘dea ;”” and the effect has been a massing into one anomalous 
14 


158 3 PROGRESS 


and entangled group the fishes of the first period of geologic 
history, with fishes of which we do not find a trace save in 
the existing scene of things, and of the highest families of 
their class with families that occupy the lowest place. But 
we live in an age in which even the benefactors of the world 
of mind cannot make false steps with impunity ; and so, 
while Agassiz’s three ichthyic orders will continue to be 
recognized by the paleontologist as the orders of three great 
geologic periods, the Suctorii have already been struck from 
off his higher fishes by the classification of Muller and Owen, 
and carried to that lowest point in the scale (indicated by 
Linneus and Oken) which their inferior standing renders so 
obviously the natural one. Some of my readers may per- 
haps remember how finely Bacon, in his “ Wisdom of the 
Ancients,” interprets the old mythologic story of Prometheus. 
Prometheus, says the philosopher, had conferred inestimable 
favors on men, by moulding their forms into shape, and bring- 
‘ng them fire from heaven; and yet they complained of him 
and his teachings to Jupiter. And the god, instead of cen- 
suring their ingratitude, was pleased with the complaint, and 
rewarded them with gifts. In putting nature to the question, 
it is eminently wholesome to be doubting, cross-examining, 
complaining ; ever demanding of our masters and benefactors 
the philosophers, that they should reign over us, not arbitra 
rily and despotically, 


‘‘ Like the old kings, with high exacting looks, 
Sceptred and globed,”’ 


but like our modern constitutional monarchs, who govern by 
law ; and, further, that an appeal from their decisions on all 
subjects within the jurisdiction of Nature should for ever 
lie open to Nature herself. The seeming ingratitude of such 


OF ICHTHYIC CLASSIFICATION. 159 


a course, if the “complaints” be made in a right spirit and 
on proper grounds, Jupiter always rewards with gifts. 

Let us now see for ourselves, in this spirit, whether there 
may not be something absolutely derogatory, in the existence 
of a cartilaginous skeleton, to the creatures possessing it; cr 
whether a deficit of internal bone may not be greatly more 
than neutralized, as it assuredly must have been in the view 
of Linnzus, Muller, and Owen, by a larger than ordinary 
share of a vastly more important substance. 


160 RANK DEPENDENT 


THE PLACOID BRAIN. 


EMBRYONIC CHARACTERISTICS NOT NECESSARILY OF A LOW 


ORDER. 


Twat special substance, according to whose mast and de- 
gree of development all the creatures of this world take rank 
in the scale of creation, is not Bone, but brain. Were ani- 
mals to be ranged according to the solidity of their bones, the 
class of birds would be assigned the first place; the family 
of the Felida, including the tiger and lion, the second ; and 
he other terrestrial carnivora the third. Man and the herbiv- 
orous animals, though tolerably low in the scale, would be 
in advance of at least the reptiles. Most of these, however, 
would take precedence of the sagacious Delphinide ; the 
osseous fishes would come next in order; the true Placoids 
would follow, succeeded by the Sturiones ; and the Suctori, 
i. e. Cyclostomi or Lampreys, would bring up the rear. 
There would be evidently no order here: the utter confusion 
of such an arrangement, like that of the bits of a dissected 
map flung carelessly out of its box by a child, would of 
itself demonstrate the inadequacy and erroneousness of 
the regulating principle. But how very different the appear- 
ance presented, when for solidity of bone we substi- 
tute development of brain! Man takes his proper place 


i ii i 


ON BRAIN, NOT BONE. ° 16) 


at the head of creation ; the lower mammalia fllow, —eack 
species in due order, according to its modicum of intel- 
ligence ; the birds succeed the mammalia ; the reptiles suc- 
ceed the birds; the fishes succeed the reptiles; next in 
the long procession come the invertebrate animals; and 
these, too, take rank, if not according to their developmen 
of brain proper, at least according to their development of 
the substance of brain. The occipital nervous ganglion of the 
scorpion greatly exceeds in size that of the earthworm; and 
the occipital nervous ring of the lobster, that of the intes- 
tinal Ascaris. At length, whén we reach the lowest or acrite 
division of the animal kingdom, the substance of brain 
altogether disappears. It has been calculated by natural- 
ists, that in the vertebrata, the brain in the class of fishes 
bears an average proportion to the spinal cord of about twe 
to one; in the class of reptiles, of about two and a half te 
one ; in the class of birds, of about three to one; in the class 
of mammals, of about four to one; and in the high-placed, 
sceptre-bearing human family, a proportion of not less than 
twenty-three to one. It is palpably according to development 
ot brain, not development of bone, that we are to determine 
points of precedence among the animals, —a fact of which 
no one can be more thoroughly aware than the author of the 
“‘ Vestiges” himself. Of this let me adduce a striking in- 
stance, of which I shall make further use anon. 

** All life,” says Oken, “is from the sea; none from the 
continent. Man also is a child of the warm and shallow 
parts of the sea in the neighborhood of the land.” Such 
also was the hypothesis of Lamarck and Maillet. In follow- 
ing up the view of his masters, the author of the “ Vestiges ” 
fixes on the Delphinide as the sea-inhabiting progenitors of 


the simial family, and, through the simial family, of man 
14* 


162 . RANK DEPENDENT 


For that highest order of the mammalia to which tne Se 
miad@ (monkeys) belong, “there remains,” he says, “a 
basis in the Delphinide, the last and smallest of the cetacean 
tribes. This affiliation has a special support in the brain of 
the dolphin family, which is distinctly allowed to be, in pro- 
portion to general bulk, the greatest among mammalia next 
to the orang-outang and man. We learn from Tiedemann, 
that each of the cerebral hemispheres is composed, as in 
man and the monkey tribe, of three lobes, —an anterior, a 
middle, and a posterior; and these hemispheres preseni 
much more numerous circumvolutions and grooves than those 
of any other animal. Here it might be rash to found any 
thing upon the ancient accounts of the dolphin, — its famil- 
larity with man, and its helping him in shipwreck and various 
marine disasters ; although it is difficult to believe these sto- 
ries to be altogether without some basis in fact. There 1s ne 
doubt, however, that the dolphin evinces a predilection for 
human society, and charms the mariner by the gambols which 
it performs beside his vessel.” 

Here, then, the author of the “ Vestiges” palpably founds 
on a large development of brain in the dolphin, and on the 
manifestation of a correspondingly high order of instincts, — 
and this altogether irrespective of the structure or compo: 
sition of the creature’s internal skeleton. ‘The substance to 
which he looks as all-important in the case is brain, not bone. 
For were he to estimate the standing of the dclphin, not by 
its brain, but by its skeleton, he would have to assign to it a 
place, not only not in advance of its brethren the mammalia 
of the sea, but even in the rear of the reptiles of the sea, the 
marine tortoises, or turtles, — and scarce more than abreast 
of the osseous fishes. “ Fishes,’ says Professor Owen, in his 
‘ Lectures on the Vertebrate Animals,” ‘ have the least pro- 


JN BRAIN, NOT BONE. 163 


portion of earthy matter in their bones; birds the :argest. 
The mammalia, especially the active, predatory species, have 
more earth, or harder bones, than reptiles. In each class, 
however, there are differences in the density of bone among 
its several members. For example, in the fresh-water fishes, 
the bones are lighter, and retain more animal matter, than 
n those which swim in the denser sea. And in the dolphin, — 
a warm-blooded marine animal, they differ little in this re- 
spect from those of the sea-fish.”” Such being the fact, it is 
surely but fair to inquire of the author of the * Vestiges,” 
why he should determine the rank and standing of the Del- 
phinide according to one set of principles, and the rank and 
standing of the Placoids according to another and entirely 
different set? If the Delphinida are to be placed high in the 
scale, notwithstanding the softness of their skeletons, simply 
because their brains are large, why are the Placoids to be 
placed low in the scale, notwithstanding the largeness of their 
brains, simply because their skeletons are soft? It is not too 
much to demand, that on the principle which he himself re- 
cognizes as just, he should either degrade the dolphin or ele- 
vate the Placoid. For it is altogether inadmissible that he 
should reason on one set of laws when the exigencies of Lis 
hypothesis require that creatures with soft skeletons should 
be raised in the scale, and on another and entirely differ- 
ent set when its necessities demand that they should be de 
pressed. 

But do the Placoids possess in reality a large development 
of brain? I have examined the brains of almost all the com- 
mon fish of our coast, both osseous and cartilaginous, not, 
[ fear, with the skill of a Tiedemann, but all the more intel- 
ligently in consequence of what Tiedemann had previously 
done and written; and so I can speak with some little con: 


164 THE PLACOID BRAIN. 


fidence on the sub ect, so far at least as my modicum of ex. 
perience, thus acyuired, extends. Of all the common fish 
of the Scottish seas, the spotted or lesser dog-fish bears, in 
proportion to its size, the largest brain; the gray or picke.l 
dog-fish ranks next in its degree of development; the Rays, 
in their various species, follow after; and the osseous fishes 
compose at least the great body of the rear; while stil. 
further behind, there lags a hapless class —the Suctorii, one 
of which, the glutinous hag, has scarce any brain, and one, 
the Amphiorus or lancelet, wants brain altogether. I have 
compared the brain of the spotted dog-fish with that of a 
young alligator, and have found that in scarce any percep- 
tible degree was it inferior, in point of bulk, and very slightly 
indeed in point of organization, to the brain of the reptile. 
And the instincts of this Placoid family, — one of the truest 
existing representatives of the Placoids of the Silurian Sys- 
tem* to which we can appeal, — correspond, we invariably 
find, with their superior cerebral development. I have 
seen the common dog-fish, Spinax Acanthias, hovering in 
packs in the Moray Frith, some one or two fathoms away 
from the side of the herring boat from which, when the 
fishermen were engaged in hauling their nets, | have watched 
them, and have admired the caution which, with all their 
ferocity of disposition, they rarely failed to manifest ; — how 
they kept aloof from the net, even more warily than the 
cetacea themselves, — though both dog-fish and cetacea are 
occasionally entangled ; — and how, when a few herrings were 





* The Silurian Placoids are most adequately represented by the 
Cestracion of the southern hemisphere; but I know not that of the 
peculiar character and instincts of this interesting Placoid, — the last 
of its race, — there is any thing known For its form and general ap- 
pearance see fig. 49, page 177 


THE PLACOID BRAIN. 165 


shaken loase from the meshes they at once darted upon them, 
exhibit. ng for a moment, through the green depths, the pale 
gleam of their abdomens, as they turned upon their sides to 
seize the desired morsels, — a motion rendered necessary by 
the position of the mouth in this family ; and how next, theia 
object accomplished, they fell back into their old position, and 
waited on as before. And I have been assured by intelligent 
fishermen, that at the deep-sea white-fishing, in which baited 
hooks, not nets, are employed, the degree of shrewd cautior. 
exercised by these creatures seems more extraordinary still 
The hatred which the fisher bears to them arises not more 
from the actual amount of mischief which they do him, than 
from the circumstance that in most cases they persist in 
doing it with complete impunity to themselves. I have seen, 
said an observant Cromarty fisherman to the writer of these 
chapters, a pack of dog-fish watching beside our boat, as we 
were hauling our lines, and severing the hooked fish, as 
they passed .them, at a bite, just a little above the vent, so tha 
they themselves escaped the swallowed hook; and I have 
frequently lost, in this way, no inconsiderable portion of a 
fishing. I have observed, however, he continued, that when 
a fresh pack of hungry dog-fish came up, and joined the 
pack that had been robbing us so coolly, and at their leisure, 
a sudden rashness would seize the whole, — the united packs 
would become a mere heedless mob, and, rushing forward, 
they would swallow our fish entire, and be caught themselves 
by the score and the hundred. We may see something very 
similar to this taking place among even the shrewder mam- 
malia. When pig refuses to take his food, his mistress 
straightway calls upon the cat, and, quickened by the dread 
of the coming rival, he gobbles up his rations at once. With 
the comparatively large development of brain, and the cor. 


(66 THE PLACOID INSTINCTS. 


responding manifestations of instinct, which the true Placo.ds 
exhibit, we find other unequivocal marks of a general supe- 
itority to their class. In their reproductive organs they rank 
not with the common fishes, nor even with the lower rep- 
tiles, but with the Chelonians and the Sauria. Among the 
Rays, as among the higher animals, there are individual 
attachments formed between male and femaie: their eggs 
unlike the mere spawn of the ossevus fishes, or of even the 
Batrachians, are, like those of the tortoise and the crocodile, 
comparatively few in number, and of considerable size: 
their young, too, like the young of birds and of the higher 
reptiles, pass through no such metamorphosis as those of the 
toad and frog, or of the amphibia generally. And some 
of their number—the common dog-fish for instance — 
are ovoviviparous, bringing forth their young, like the 
common viper and the viviparous lizard, alive and fully 
formed. 

‘* But such features,’’ says the author of the “ Vestiges,” 
referring chiefly to certain provisions connected with the re- 
productory system in the Placoids, ‘“‘ are partly partaken of by 
families in inferior sub-kingdoms, showing that they cannot 
truly be regarded as marks of grade in their own class.” 
Nay, single features do here and there occur in the inferior 
sub-kingdoms, which very nearly resemble single features in 
the placoid character and organization, which even very 
nearly resemble single features in the human character and 
organization; but is there any of the inferior sub-kingdoms 
in which there occurs such a collocation of features? or does 
such a collocation occur in any class of animals — setting the 
Placoids wholly out of view—which is not a high class? 
Nay, further, does there occur in any of the inferior sub- 
kingdoms — existing even as a single feature —that most 


a EE a 


THE PLACOID FRAMEWORK. 16° 


prominent, leading characteristic of this series of fishes, --a 
iarge brain ° 

But is nut the “cartilaginous structure”’ of the Placoids 
analogous to the embryonic state of vertebrated animals in gen- 
eral? Do not the other placoid peculiarities to which the 
author of the “ Vestiges ”’ refers, — such as the heterocercal 
or one-sided tail, the position of the mouth on the under side 
of tne head, and the rudimental state of the maxillaries and 
intermaxillaries, — bear fuither analogies with the embryonic 
state of the higher animals? And is not ‘‘embryonic progress 
the grand key to the theory of development?” Let us ex- 
amine this matter. ‘* These are the characters,” says this 
ingenious writer, ‘¢ which, above all, | am chiefly concerned in 
looking to; for they are features of embryonic progress, and 
embryonic progress is the grand key to the theory of develop- 
ment.” Bold assertion, certainly ; but, then, assertion is not 
argument! ‘The statement is not a reason for the faith that is 
in the author of the “ Vestiges,” but simply an avowal of it; 
it is simply a confession, not a defence, of the Lamarckian 
creed ; and, instead of being admitted as embodying a first 
principle, it must be put stringently to the question, in order 
to determine whether it contain a principle at all. 

In the first place, let us remark, that the cartilaginous 
structure of the Placoids bears no very striking analogy to 
the cartilaginous structure of the higher vertebrata in the 
embryonic state. In the case of the Delphinida, with then 
soft skeletons, the analogy is greatly more close. Bone 
consists of animal matter, chiefly gelatinous, hardened by a 
diffusion of inorganic earth In the bones of young and 
fetal mammialia, inhabitants of the land, the gelatinous pre- 
vails; in the old and middle-aged there is a preponderance 
of the earth. Now, in the bones of the dolphin there is 


168 THE PLACOID FRAMEWORK. 


comparatively little earth. The analogies of its internal 
skeleton bear, not on the skeletons of its brethren the mature 
full-grown mammals of the land, but on the skeletons of their 
immature or foetal offspring. But in the case of the true 
Placoids that analogy is faint indeed. Their skeletons contain 
true bone;—the vertebral joints of the Sharks aad Rays 
possess each, as has been shown, an osseous nucleus, which 
retains, when subjected to the heat of a common fire, the 
complete form of the joint; and their cranial framework has 
its surface always covered over with hard osseous points. 
But though their skeletons possess thus their modicum of bone, 
unlike those of embryonic birds or mammals, they contain, in 
what is properly their cartilage, no gelatine. The analogy 
signally fails in the very point in which it has been deemed 
specially to exist. The cartilage of the Chondropterygit is a 
substance so essentially different from that of young or 
embryonic birdsand mammals, and so unique in the animal 
kingdom, that the heated water in which the one readily dis- 
solves has no effect whatever upon the other. It is, however, 
a curious circumstance, exemplified in some of the Shark 
family,* though it merely serves, in its exceptive character, 
to establish the general fact, that while the rays of the 
double fins, which answer to the phalanges, are all formed 
of this indissoluble cartilage, those rays which constitute 
their outer framework, with the rays which constitute the 
framework of all the single fins, are composed of a mucoidal 
cartilage, which boils into glue. At certain definite lines 
a change occurs in the texture of the skeleton ; and it is 
certainly suggestive of thought, that the difference of 
substance which the change involves distinguishes that 
OCD eI ace RR OE RP ene AF NE 6988” 


* Such as the dog-fishes, picked and spotted. 


THE EMBRYONIC TAIL. 169 


part of the skeleton which is homologically representative of 
the skeletons of the higher .vertebrata, from that part of it 
which is peculiar to the creature as a fish, viz. the dorsal and 
caudal rays, and the extremities of the double fins. These 
emphatically ichthyic portions of the animal may be dissi- 
pated by boiling, whereas what Linnzeus would perhaps term 
its reptilian portion abides the heat without reduction. 

But is not the one-sided tail, so characteristic of the sharks, 
and of almost all the ancient Ganoids, also a characteristic of 
the young salmon just burst from the egg? Yes, assuredly ; 
and, so far as research on the subject has yet extended, of 
not only the salmon, but of all the other osseous fishes in 
their foetal state. The salmon, on its escape from the egg, is 
a little monster of about three quarters of an inch in length, 
with a huge heart-shaped bag, as bulky as all the rest of its 
body, depending from its abdomen. In this bag provident 
nature has packed up for it, in lieu of a nurse, food for five 
weeks; and, moving about every where in its shallow pool, 
with its provision knapsack slung fast to it, it reminds one 
disposed to be fanciful, save that its burden is on the wrong 
side, of Scottish soldiers of the olden time summoned to attend 
their king in war, — 

‘* Each on his back, a slender store, 
His forty days’ provision bore, 
As ancient statutes tell.” 
Around that terminal part of the creature’s body traversed by 
the caudal portion of the vertebral column, which com- 
mences in the salmon immediately behind the ventrals, there 
runs at this period, and for the ensuing five weeks in which 
it does not feed, a membranous fringe or fin, which exactly 
resembles that of the tadpole, and which, existing simply as 


an expansion of the skin, exhibits no mark or rays. In the 
15 


170 EMBRYONIC PECULIARITIES 


place of the true caudal fin, however, we may detect with 
the assistance of a lens, an internal framework with two 
well-marked lobes, and ascertain, further, that this tail is set 
on awry, — the effect of a slight upward bend in the creature’s 
body. And when viewed in a strong light as a transparency 
we perceive that the spinal cord takes the same upward bend 

and, as in the sturgeon, passes in an exceedingly attenuated 
form into the upper lobe. What may be regarded as the 
design of the arrangement is probably to be found in the pe 

culiar form given to the little creature by the protuberan 

bag in front. A wise instinct teaches it, from the moment of 
its exclusion from the egg, to avoid its enemies. In the in- 
stant the human shadow falls upon its pool, we see it darting 
into some recess at the side or bottom, with singular alacrity ; 
and in order to enable it to do so, and to steer itself aright, — 
as, like an ill-trimmed vessel, deep in the water ahead, the 
balance of its body is imperfect, — there is, if | may so ex- 
press myself, a heterocercal peculiarity of helm required. It 
has got an irregularly-developed tail to balance an irregularly- 
developed body, as skiffs Jean on the one beam and full on 
the other require, in rowing, a cast of the rudder to keep them 
straight in their course. 

Sinking altogether, however, the final cause of the peculi- 
arity, and regarding it simply as a fatal one, that indicates a 
certain stage of imperfection in the creature in which it oc- 
curs, on what principle, I ask, are we to infer that what is a 
sign of immaturity in the young of one set of animals, is a 
mark of inferior organization in the adult forms of another 
set? The want of eyes in any of the animal families, or the 
want of organs of progression, or a fixed and sedentary con- 
dition, like that of the oyster, are all marks of great inferior 
ty. And yet, if we admit the principle, that what are evidences 


NOT NECESSARILY OF A LOW ORDER. 17) 


of immaturity in the young members of one family are signs 
of inferior organization in the fully-grown members of another, 
it could easily be shown that eyes and legs are defects, and 
that the unmoving oyster stands higher in the scale than the 
ever-restless fish or bird. The immature Tudularia possess 
locomotive powers, whereas in their fully developed state they 
remain fixed to one spot in their convoluted tubes. The ‘m 
mature Lepas is furnished with members well adapted for 
swimming, and with which it swims freely ; as it rises towards 
maturity, these become blighted and weak; and, when 
fully grown, — fixed by its fleshy pedicle to the rock or float: 
ing log to which it attached itself in its transition state, — it 
is no longer able to swim. The immature Balanus is fur 
nished with two eyes: in its state of maturity these are ex 
tinguished, and it passes its period of full development in 
darkness. Further, it is not generally held that in the human 
family a white skin is a decided mark of degradation, but 
rather the reverse ; and yet nothing can be more certain than 
that the Negro fcetus has a white skin. Since eyes, and or- 
gans of progression, and a power of moving freely, and a 
white skin, are mere embryonic peculiarities in the Balanus 
the Lepas, the Tubularia, and the Negro, and yet are in them. 
selves, when found in the mature animal, evidences of a 
high, not of a low standing, on what principle, I ask are we 
to infer tnat the peculiarity of a heterocercal tail, embryonic 
in the saimon, is, when found in the mature Placoid, an evi. 
dence, not of a high standing, but of a low? Every true 
analogy in the case favors an exactly opposite view. In the 
heterocercal or one-sided tail, the vertebral joints gradvally 
diminish, as in the tails of the Sauria and Ophidia, till they 
terminate in a point; whereas the homocercal tail common to 
the osseous fishes exhibits no true analogy with ‘he tails 


172 THE PLACOID TAIL. 


of the h gher orders. Its abruptly terminating vertebral co 

umn, immensely developed posterior processes, and broadly 
expanded osseous rays, seem to be simply a few of the many 
’ marks of decline and degradation which fishes, the oldest of 
the vertebrata, exhibit in this late age of the world, and which, 
in at least the earlier geologic periods, when they were great: 


ly younger as a class, they did not betray. 


Fig. 48. 













a BRACES MAAS wae 
ESS “ SUES DSSS LT Cr 


ek 
3 SS 
; 2 oe 


a. Tail of Spinax Acanthas. ; 
b. Tail of Ichthyosaurus Tenuirostris, (Buckland.) 


In illustration of this view, I would fain recommend to the 
reader a simple experiment. Let him procure the tail of a 
common dog-fish, (fig. 48, a,) and cutting it across about half 
an inch above where the caudal fin begins, let him boil it 
smartly for about half an hour. He will first see it swell 


THE PLACOID TAIL. 173 


and then burst, all around those thinner parts of the fin tha 
are traversed by the caudal rays, — wholly mucoidal, as shown 
by this test, in their texture, and which yield to the boiling 
water, as if formed of isinglass. They finally dissolve, and 
drop away, with the surrounding cuticular integument ; and 
then there only remains, as the insoluble framework of the 
whole, the bodies of the vertebree, with their neural and 
hoemal processes. ‘I'he tail has now lost much of its ichthyic 
character, and has acquired, instead, a considerable degree 
of resemblance to the reptilian tail, as exemplified in the sau- 
rians. | have introduced into the wood-cut, for the purpose 
of comparison, the tail of the ichthyosaurus, (2.) It consists, 
like the other, of a series of gradually diminishing vertebre, 
and must have also supported, says Professor Owen, a pro- 
pelling fin, placed vertically, as in the shark, which, how 
ever, from its perishable nature, has in every instance dis- 
appeared in the earth, as that of the dog-fish disappears in 
the boiling water. It will be seen that-ts processes are com 
paratively smaller than those of the fish, and that the bodies 
of its vertebre are shorter and bulkier; but there is at least 
a general correspondence of the parts ; and were the tail of the 
croccaile, of which the vertebral bodies are slender and the 
processes large, to be substituted for that of the enaliosaur here 
the correspondence would be more marked still. After thus 
developing the tail of the reptile out of that of the fish, —as the 
cauldron-bearing Irish magician of the tale developed young 
ladies out of old women, — simply by doiling, let the reader 
proceed to a second stage of the experiment, and see whether 
he may not be able still further to develope the reptilian tail so 
obtained, into that of the mammal, by burning. Let him spread 
it out on a piece of iron hoop, and thrust it into the fire ; 


and then, after exposure for some time to a red heat has 
15 * 


174 THE PLACOID TAIL. 


consumed and dissipated its merely cartilaginous portions 
such as the neural and heemal processes, with the little pieces 
which form the sides of the neural arch, and left only the 
whitened bodies of the vertebra, let him say whether the 
bony portion which remsins does not present a more exact 
resemblance to the mammiferous tail — that of the dog, for 
example — than any thing else he ever saw. The Lamarck- 
tans may well deem it an unlucky circumstance, that one spe- 
cial portion of their theory should demand the depreciation of 
the heterocercal tail, seeing that it might be represented with 
excellent effect in another, as not merely a connecting link in 
the upward march of progression between the tail of the true 
fish and that of the true reptile, but as actually containing in 
itself — as the caterpillar contains the future pupa and but- 
terfly — the elements of the reptilian and mammiferous tai. 
If there be any virtue in analogy, the heterocercal tail is, J 
repeat, of a decidedly higher type than the homocercal one. 
It furnishes the first example in the vertebrata of the coc- 
cygeal vertebree diminishing to a point, which characterizes 
not only all the higher reptiles, but also all the higher mam- 
mals, and which we find represented by the Os coccygis in 
‘nan himself. But to this special point I shall again refer. 
With regard to that rudimentary state of the occipital 
‘ramework of the Placoids to which the author of the “ Ves- 
liges” refers, it may be but necessary to say that, notwith- 
standing the simplicity of their box-like skulls, they bear in 
their character, as cases for the protection of the brain 
at least as close an analogy to the skulls of the higher an:- 
mals, as those of the osseous fishes, which consist usually 
of the extraordinary number of from sixty to eighty bones — 
1 mark — the author of the “ Vestiges”’ himself being judge 
in the case — rather of inferiority than the reverse. “ Ele. 


THE PLACOID CRANIUM AND MOUTH. 175 


vation is marked in the scale,” we find him saying, “ by an 
animal exchanging a multiplicity of parts serving one end, 
for a smaller number.” The skull of a cod consists of about 
thrice as many separate bones as that of a man. But I do 
not we | see that in this case the fact either of simplicity in 
excess or of multiplicity in excess can be insisted upon in 
either direction, as a proper basis for argument Nearly the 
same remark applies to the maxillaries as to the skull. The 
_under jaw in man consists of a single bone; that of the thorn- 
back — if we do not include the two suspending ribs, which 
belong equally to the upper jaw — of two bones, (the number 
in all the mammiferous quadrupeds:) that of the cod of 
four bones, and, if we include the suspending ribs, of twelve. 
On what principle are we to hold, with one as the repre- 
sentative number of the highest type of jaw, that two in- 
dicates a lower standing than four, or four than twelve? In 
reference to the further statement, that in many of the an- 
cient fishes “ traces can be observed of the muscles hav 
ing been attached to the external plates, strikingly indi- 
cating their low grade as vertebrate animals,” it may be 
answer enough to state, that the peculiarity in question was 
not a characteristic of the most ancient fishes, — the Placoids 
of the Silurian system, — but of some Ganoids of the suc- 
ceeding systems. The reader may remember, as a case 
in point, the example furnished by the nail-like bone of 
Asterolepis, figured in page 111, in which there exists depres- 
sions resembling that of the round ligament in the head of 
the quadrupedal thigh-bone. And as for the remark that 
the opening of tne mouth of the Placoid, “ on the under side 
of the head,” is indicative of a low embryonic conditioa, it 
might be almost sufficient to remark, in turn, that the 
lowest family of fishes — that to which the supposed worms 


\76 THE PLACOID 


of Linnzeus belong — have the mouth not under, but at th 

anterior termination of the head,—in itself an evidence 
that the position of the mouth at the extremity of the muz 
zle, common to the greater number of ihe osseous fishes, 
can be no very high character, seeing that the humbles: 
of the Suctorii possess it; and that many osseous fishes, 
whose mouths open, not on the under, but the upper side of 
the snout, as in the distorted and asymetrical genus Platessa, 
are not only in no degree superior to their bony neighbors, 
and far inferior to the placoid ones, but bear, in direct con- 
sequence of the arrangement, an expression of unmistakable 
stupidity. The objection, however, admits of a greatly more 
conclusive reply. 

“ This fish, to speak in the technical language of Agassiz,’ 
says the Edinburgh Reviewer, in reference to the ancien 
ichthyolite of the Wenlock Shale, “ undoubtedly belongs ta 
the Cestraciont family of the Placoid order, — proving te 
demonstration that the oldest known fossil fish [1845] be- 
longs to the highest type of that division of the vertebrata.” 
I may add, that the character and family of this ancient 
specimen was determined by our highest British authority m 
fossil ichthyology, Sir Philip Egerton. And it is in depre- 
ciation of Professor Sedgwick’s statement regarding its high 
standing that the author of the “ Vestiges”” refers to the 
supposed inferiority indicated by a mouth opening, not at the 
extremity of the muzzle, but under the head. Let us, then, 
fully grant, for the argument’s sake, that the occurrence of 
the mouth in the muzzle zs a sign of superiority, and its oc- 
surreace under the head a mark of great inferiority, and 
then ascertain how the fact stands with regard to the Cestra- 
cion. ‘The Cestracion sub-genus,” says Mr. James Wilson, 
in his admirabie treatise on fishes, which forms the article 


CRANIUM AND MOUTH. 177 


(cuTHyoLoey in the “ Encyclopedia Britannica,” “ has. the 
temporal aperiure, the anal fin, and rounded teeth, of 
Squalus Mustelus , but the mouth is TERMINAL, Of AT THE EX- 
TREMITY OF THE POINTED MUZZLE.” The accompany ing 


Fig. 4y. 





PORT JACKSON SHARK, (Cestracion Phillippi.) 


figure, (fig. 49,) taken. from a specimen of Ceséracion in the 
collection of Professor John Fleming, may be recorded as of 
some little interest, both from its direct bearing on the point 
in question, and from the circumstance that it represents, not 
inadequately for its size, the sole surviving species (Cestracion 
Phillippi) of the oldest vertebrate family of creation. With 
this family, so far as is yet known, ichthyic existence first be- 
gan. It does not appear that on the globe which we inhabit 
there was ever an ocean tenanted by living creatures at all 
that had not its Cestracion, —a statement which could not be 
made regarding any other vertebrate family. In Agassi2’s 
** Tabular View of the Genealogy of Fishes,” the Cestracionts, 
und they only, sweep across the entire geologic scale. And, 
as shown in the figure, the mouth in this ancient family, instead 
of opening, as in the ordinary sharks, under the middle of the 
head, to expose them to the suspicion of being creatures of 


[78 GESTATION 


low and embryonic character, opened in a broad, honest look 
mg muzzle, very much resembling that of the hog. The 
mouths of the most ancient Placoids of which we know any 
thing, did not, I reiterate, open under their heads. 

But why introduce the element of embryonic progress into 
this question at all? It is not a question of embryonic pro- 
gress. The very legerdemain of the sophist— the juggling 
by which he substitutes his white balls for black, or converts 
his pigeons into crows — consists in the art of attaching the 
conclusions founded on the facts or conditions of one sub- 
ject, to some other subject essentially distinct in its nature. 
Gestation is not creation. The history of the young of ani- 
nals in their embryonic state is simply the history of the foetal 
young; just as the history of insect transformation, in which 
it has been held by good men, but weak reasoners, that there 
exists direct evidence of the doctrine of the resurrection, is 
the history of insect transformation, and of nothing else. 
True, the human mind is so constituted that it converts all 
nature into a storehouse of comparisons and analogies; and 
this fact of the metamorphosis of the creeping caterpillar, 
after first passing through an intermediate period of apparent 
death as an inert aurelia, into a winged image, seemed te 
have seized on the human fancy at a very early age, as won- 
derfully illustrative of life, death, and the future state. The 
Egyptians wrapped up the bodies of their dead in the chrysalis 
form, so that a mummy, in their apprehension, was simply a 
human pupa, waiting the period of its enlargement; and the 
Greeks had but one word in their language for butterfly and 
the soul. But not the less true is it, notwithstanding, that the 
facts of insect transformation furnish no legitimate key to the 
totally distinct facts of a resurrection of the body, and of a 
life after death. And on what principle, then, are we to trace 


NOT CREATION 179 


the origin of past dynasties in the changes of the faetus, if 
not the rise of the future dynasty in the transformations of 
the caterpillar? “ These [embryonic] characters [that of 
the heterocercal tail, and of the mouth of the ordinary shark 
type] are essential and important,” remarks the author of the 
* Vestiges,” ‘‘ whatever the Edinburgh Reviewer may say 
to the contrary ; — they are the characters which, above all, 
lam chiefly concerned in looking to, for they are the features 
of einbryonic progress, and ‘mbryonic progress is the grand 
key to the theory of development.” Yes ; the grand key to 
the theory of fetal development; for embryonic progress 7s 
foetal development. But on what is the assertion based that 
they form a key to the history of creation? Aurelia are not 
human bodies laid out for the sepulenre, nor are butterflies 
human souls ; as certainly gestation is not creation, nora 
life of months in the uterus a succession of races for mil- 
lions of ages outside of it. On what grounds, then, is the 
assertion made? Does it embody the result of a discovery, 
or announce the message of a revelation? Did the author of 
the ** Vestiges” find it out for himself, or did an angel from 
heaven tell it him? If it be a discovery, show us, we ask, 
the steps through which you have been conducted to it sr it 
a revolution produce, for our satisfaction, the evidence on 
which it rests. For we are not to accept as data, in a ques- 
tion of science, idle comparisons or vague analogies, whether 
produced through the intentional juggling of the sophist, or 
involuntarily conjured up in the dreamy delirium of an excited 
fancy. ; 

It is one of the difficulties incident to the task of replying 
to any dogmatic statement of error, that every mere annun- 
ciaiion of a false fact or false principle must be met by elab- 
orate counter-statement or carefully constructed argument, 


180 APOLOGY. 


and that prolixity is thus unavoidably entailed on the eontre 

versialist who labors to set right what his antagonist has se 
wrong. The promulgator of error may be lively and enter: 
taining, whereas his pains-taking confutator runs no small risk 
of being tedious and dull. May I, however, solicit the for- 
bearance of the reader, if, after already spending much time 
in skirmishing on ground taken up by the enemy, — one of 
the disadvantages incident to the mere defendant in a contro- 
versy of this nature, —I spend a little more in indicating what 
I deem the proper ground on which the standing of the earlier 
vertebrata should be decided. To the test of brain I nave 
already referred, as all-important in the question : I would now 
refer to the test of what may be termed homological symmetry 
of organization. 


i 


THE PRINCIPLz OF DEGRADATION, 1si 


THE PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION. 


ITS HISTORY. 


TuHouGcH all animals be fitted by nature for the life which 
their instincts teach them to pursue, naturalists have learned 
to recognize among them certain aberrant and mutilated 
forms, in which the type of the special class to which they 
belong seems distorted and degraded. They exist as the 
monster families of creation, just as among families there ap- 
pear from time to time monster zmdividuals,—men, for in- 
stance, without feet, or hands, or eyes, or with their feet, 
hands, or eyes grievously misplaced,—sheep with their fore 
legs growing out of their necks, or ducklings with their 
wings attached to their haunches. Among these degraded 
races, that of the footless serpent, which ‘‘goeth upon its 
belly,” has been long noted by the theologian as a race typi- 
cal, in its condition and nature, of an order of hopelessly 
degraded beings, borne down to the dust by a clinging curse; 
and, curiously enough, when the first comparative anatomists 
in the world give ¢herr readiest and most prominent instance 
of degradation among the denizens of the natural world, it is 
this very order of footless reptiles that they select. So far as 
the geologist yet knows, the Ophidians did not appear during 
the Secondary ages, when the monarchs of creation belonged 


16 


182 THE PRINCIPLE 


to the reptilian division, but were ushered upon the scene 
in the times of the Tertiary deposits, when the mammalian 
dynasty had supplanted that of the Iguanodon and Megalosau- 
rus. Their ill omened birth took place when the influence 
of their house was on the wane, as if to set such a stamp of 
utter hopelessness on its fallen condition, as that set by the 
birth of a worthless or idiot heir on the fortunes of a sinking 
family. The degradation of the Ophidians consists in the 
absence of limbs, — an absence total in by much the greater 
number of their families, and represented in others, as in 
the boas and pythons, by mere abortive hinder limbs con 
cealed in the skin; but they are thus not only monsters 
through defect of parts,if I may so express myself, but 
also monsters through redundancy, as a vegetative repe- 
tition of vertebra and ribs, to the number of three or four 
hundred, forms the special contrivance by which the want 
of these is compensated. [am also disposed to regard the 
poison-bag of the venomous snakes as a mark of degra- 
dation ;—it seems, judging from analogy, to be a pro- 
tective provision of a low character, exemplified chiefly in 
the invertebrate families, — ants, centipides, and mosqul- 
tos, — spiders, wasps, and scorpions. The higher carnivora 
are, we find, furnished with unpoisoned weapons, which. 
like those of civilized man, are sufficiently effective, simply 
from the excellence of their construction, and the power 
with which they are wielded, for every purpose of assault 
or defence It is only the squalid savages and degraded 
boschmen of creation that have their feeble teeth and tiny 
stings steeped in venom, and so made formidable. Monstros- 
ity through displacement of parts constitutes yet another form 
of degradation ; and this form, united, in some instances, to 
the other two, we find curiously exemplified in the geological 





OF DEGRADATION, 183 


history of the fish, —a history which, with all its blanks and 
missing portions, is yet better known than that of any other 
division of the vertebrata. And it is, I am convinced, from 
a survey of the progress of degradation in the great ichthyic 
division,— a progress recorded as “ with a pen of iron in 
the rock for ever,””— and not from superficial views founded 
on the cartilaginous or non-cartilaginous texture of the ichthyic 
skeleton, that the standing of the kingly fishes of the earlier 
periods is to be adequately determined. Any other mode of 
Survey, save the parallel mode which takes developmen 
of brain into account, evolves, we find, nothing like principle, 
and lands the inquirer in inextricable difficulties and incon- 
sistencies. 

In all the higher non-degraded vertebrata we find a certain 
uniform type of skeleton, consisting of the head, the vertebral 
column, and four limbs; and these last, in the various sym- 
metrical forms, whether exemplified in the higher fish, the 
higher reptiles, the higher birds, the higher mammals, or in 
man himself, occur always in a certain determinate order. In 
all the mammals, the scapular bases of the fore limbs begin 
opposite the eighth vertebra from the skull backwards, the 
seven which go before being cervical or neck vertebree ; ir. 
the birds, — a division of the vertebrata that, from their pecu- 
liar organization, require longer and more flexible necks than 
the mammals, — the scapulars begin at distances from the 
occiput, varying, according to the species, from opposite the 
thirteenth to opposite the twenty-fourth vertebra ; and in the 
reptiles —a division which, according to Cuvier, « presents a 
greater diversity of forms, characters, and modes of gait, 
than any of the other two,” — they occur at almost all points, 
from opposite the second vertebra’, as in the frog, to opposite 
the thirty-third or thirty-fourth vertebra, as in some species 


184 PROGRESS 


of plesiosaurus. But in all,— whether mammals, birds, 01 
undegraded reptiles, — they are so placed, that the creatures 
possess necks, of greater or less length, as an essential portion 
of their general type. The hinder limbs have also in all 
se three divisions of the animal kingdom their typical 
place. ‘They occur opposite, or very nearly opposite, the 
posterior termination of the abdominal cavity, and mark the 
line of separation between the vertebre of the trunk (dorsal 
lumbar, and sacral) and the third and last, or caudal division 
of the column, —a division represented in man by but four 
vertebiz, and in the crocodile by about thirty-five, but which 
is found to exist, as I have already said, in all the more per- 
fect forms. The limbs, then, in all the symmetrical animals 
of the first three classes of the vertebrata, mark the three 
great divisions of the vertebral column, — the division of the 
neck, the division of the trunk, and the division of the tal, 
Let us now inquire how the case stands with the fourth and 
lowest class, — that of the fishes. 

In those existing Placoids that represent the fishes of the 
earliest vertebrate period, the places of the double fins, — 
pectorals and ventrals, — which form in the ichthyic class the 
true homologues of the limbs, correspond to the places which 
these occupy in the symmetrical mammals, birds, and reptiles 
The scapular bases of the fore or pectoral fins ordinarily be 
gin opposite the twelfth or fourteenth vertebra ;* but they range 
as in man and the mammals, in a forward direction, so that the 
fins themselves are opposite the eighth or tenth. The pelvic 
bases of the ventrai fins are placed nearly opposite the base of 
the abdomen, so that, as in all the symmetrical animals, the 








¢ The twelfth 1n Spinaz Acanthias, and the fourteenth in Scyllium 
Stellare. 


OF DEGRADATION. 405 


vent opens between, or nearly between, those hinder hmbs 
which the bases support. In the Rays, which, so far as 1s yet 
known, did not appear in creation until the Secondary ages 
had begun, the bases of the fore limbs, ¢. e. pectoral fins, 
are attached to the lower part of a huge cervical vertebra, 
nearly equal in length to ald the trunk vertebra united; and 
in the Chimeridz, which also first. appear in the Secondary 
division, they are attached, as in the osseous fishes, to the 
hinder part of the head. But in the representatives of all 
those Silurian Placoids yet known, of which the family can 
be determined, or any thing with safety predicated, the cervica. 
division is found to occur as a series of vertebre: they pre- 
sent in this, as in the hinder portion of their bodies, the homo- 
logical symmetry of organization typical of that vertebral sub 
kingdom to which they belong. 

In the second great period of ichthyic existence, — that of 
the Old Red Sandstone, — we find the first example, in the 
class of fishes, of ** monstrosity through displacement of parts,’ 
and apparently also — in at least two genera, though the evi- 
dence on this head be not yet quite complete — of * mon- 
strosity through defect of parts.” In all the Ganoids of the 
period, with (so far as we can determine the point) only two 
exceptions, the scapular bases of the fore limbs are brought 
forward from their typical place opposite the base of the cervi- 
cal vertebre, and stuck on to the occipital plate. There 
occurs, in consequence, in one great order of the ichthyic 
class, such a departure from the symmetrical type as would 
take place in a monster example of the human family in 
whom the neck had been annihilated, and the arms stuck on 
to the back of the hezd. And in the genera Coccosteus and 
Pterichthys we find tne: first example of degradation through 
defect. Inthe Pterichthys the hinder limbs seem wanting 

16 * 


186 PROGRESS 


and in the Coccosteus we find no trace of the fore limbs. The 
one resembles a monster of the human family born without 
hands, and the other a monster born without feet. Ages and 
centuries pass, and long unreckoned periods come to a close; 
and then, after the termination of the Paleozoic period, we 
see that change taking place in the form of the ichthyic tail, 
.o which I have already referred, (and to which I must refer 
at least once more,) as singularly illustrative of the progress 
of degradation. Yet other ages and centuries pass away, 
during w iich the reptile class attains to its fullest development, 
in point of size, organization, and number; and then, after 
the times of the Cretaceous deposits have begun, we find yet — 
another remarkable monstrosity of displacement introduced 
among all the fishes of one very numerous order, and among 
no inconsiderable proportion of the fishes of another. In the 
newly-introduced Ctenoids, (Acanthopterygti,) and in those 
families of the Cycloids which Cuvier erected into the order 
Malacopterygii sub-brachiati, the hinder limbs are brought 
forward, and stuck on to the base of the previously misplaced 
fore limbs. All the four limbs, by a strange monstrosity of 
displacement, are crowded into the place of the extinguished 
neck. And such, at the present day, is the prevalent type 
among fishes. Monstrosity through defect is also found to in- 
crease ; so that the snake-like apoda, or feet-wanting fishes, 
form a numerous order, some of whose genera are devoid, as 
in the common eels and the congers, of only the hinder limbs, 
while in others, as in the genera Mureena and Synbranchus, 
both hinder and fore limbs are wanting. In the class of fishes, 
as fishes now exist, we find many more evidences of the mon- 
strosity which results from both the misplacement and defect 
of parts, than in the other three classes of the vertebrata united 

and knowing their geological history better than that of any of 


OF DEGRADATION. 18% 
the cthers, we know, in consequence, that the monstrosities 
did not appear early, but late, and that the progress of the 
race as a whole, though it still retains not a few of the higher 
forms, has been a progress, not of development from the low 
to the high, but of degradation from the high to the low. 

The reader may mark for himself, in the flounder, plaice 
halibut, or turbot, — fishes of a family of which there appears 
no trace in the earlier periods, — an extreme example of the 
degradation of distortion superadded to that of displacement 
At a first glance the limbs seem but to exhibit merely the 
amount of natural misarrangement and misorder common 
to the Acanthopterygii and Sub-brachiati ; — the base of the 
pectorals are stuck on to the head, and the base of the ven- 
trals attached to that of the pectorals. From the circum- 
stance, however, that the creature is twisted half round and 
laid on its side, we find that at least one of the pairs of 
double fins — the pectorals — perform the part of single fins, 
— one projecting from the animal’s superior, the other from 
its inferior side, in the way the anal and dorsal tins project 
from the upp>r and under surfaces of other fishes; while its 
real dorsal and anal fins, both developed very largely, and — 
in order to preserve its balance — in about an equal degree, 
and wonderfully correspondent in form, perform, from their 
lateral position, the functions of single fins. Indeed, at a first 
glance they seem the analogues of the largely-developed pec- 
torals of a very different family of flat fishes, — the Rays. 
It would appear as if single and double fins, by some such 
mutual agreement as that which, according to the old ballad, 
took place between the churl of Auchtermuchty and_ his 
wife, had agreed to exchange callings, and perform each the 
work of the other. The ‘ail, too, possesses, in consequence 
of the twist, not the vertical position of other fisb-tails. but 


188 PROGRESS 


is spread out horizontally, like the tails of the cetacea It is 
however, in the head of the flounder and its cogeners that 
we find the more extraordinary distortions exemplified. In 
order to accommodate it to the general twist, which rendered 
lateral what in other fishes is dorsal and abdominal, and dor- 
sal and abdominal what in other fishes is lateral, one half its 
features had to be twisted to the one side, and the other half 
to the other. The face and cranium have undergone such a 
change as that which the human face and cranium would un- 
dergo, were the eyes to be drawn towards the left ear, and the 
mouth towards the right. The skull, in consequence, exhibits 
in its fixed bones, a strange Cyclopean character, unique 
among the families of creation: it has its one well-marked 
eve orbit opening, like that of Polyphemus, direct in the middle 
of the fore part of its head; while the other, external to the 
cranium altogether, we find placed among the free bones, di- 
rectly over the maxillaries. And the wry mouth — twisted in 
the opposite direction, as if to keep up such a balance of de- 
formity as that which the-breast-hump of a hunchback forms to 
the hump behind —is in keeping with the squiut eyes. The 
jaws are strangely asymmetrical. In symmetrical fishes the 
two bones that compose the anterior half of the lower jaw are 
as perfectly correspondent in form and size as the left hand or 
left foot is correspondent, in the human subject, to the right 
hand or right foot; but not such their character in the floun- 
der. The one is a broad, short, nearly straight bone ; the other 
is larger, narrower, and bent like a bow; and while the one 
contains only from four to six teeth, the other contains from 
thirty to thirty-five. Scarcely in the entire ichthyic kingdom 
are there any two jaws taat less resemble one another than the 
two halves of the jaw of the flounder, turbot, halibut, or plaice 
The intermaxillary bones are equally ill matched: the one is 





OF DEGRADATION. 189 


tully twice the size of the other, and contains about thrice as 
many teeth. That bilateral symmetry of the skeleton which 
is so invariable a characteristic of the vertebrata, that ordinary 
observers, who have eyes for only the rare and the uncom. 
mon, fail to remark it, but which a Newton could regard as so 
wonderful, and so thoroughly in harmony with the uniformity 
of the planetary system, has scarce any place in the asymmet- 
rical head of the flounder. There exists in some of our north 
country fishing villages an ancient apologue, which, though 
not remarkable for point or meaning, at least serves to show 
that this peculiar example of distortion the rude fishermen of 
a former age were observant enough to detect. Once on a 
time the fishes met, it is said, to elect a king; and their 
choice fell on the herring. “The herring king !’? contempt- 
uously exclaimed the flounder, a fish of consummate vanity, 
and greatly piqued on this occasion that its own presumed 
claims should have been overlooked; ‘* where, then, am I?” 
And straightway, in punishment of its conceit and rebellion, 
“its eyes turned to the back of its head.” Here is there a 
story palpably founded on the degradation of misplacemen 
and distortion, which originated ages ere the naturalist had 
recognized either the term or the principle. 

It would be an easy matter for an ingenious theorist, not 
much disposed to distinguish between the minor and the 
master laws of organized being, to get up quite as unexcep- 
tionable a theory of degradation as of development. The 
one-eyed, one-legged Chelsea pensioner, who had a child, un- 
vorn at the time, laid to his charge, agreed to recognize his 
relationship to the little creature, if, on its coming into the 
world, it was found to bave a green patch over its eye, 
and a wooden leg. And, in order to construct a hypothesis 
of progressive degradation, the theorist has but to take for 


190 PROGRESS 


granted the transmission to other generatuons of defects ane 
compensating redundancies at once as extreme and acciden: 
tal as the loss of eyes c: limbs, and the acquisition of timber 
legs or green patches. The snake, for instance, he might re- 
gard as a saurian, that, having accidentally lost its limbs, ex- 
erted itself to such account throughout a series of generations, 
in making up for their absence, as to spin out for itself, by dint 
of writhing and wriggling, rather more than a hundred ad- 
ditional vertebra, and to alter, for purposes of greater flexibil- 
ity, the structure of all the rest. And as fishes, when nearly 
stunned by a blow, swim for a few seconds on their side, he 
might regard the flounders as a race of half-stunned fishes, pre- 
viously degraded by the misplacement of their limbs, that, 
instead of recovering themselves from the blow given to some 
remote parent of the family, had expended all their energies in 
twisting their mouths round to what chanced to be the under 
side on which they were laid, and their eyes to what chanced 
to be the upper, and that made their pectorals serve for anal 
and dorsal fins, and their anal and dorsal fins serve for pecto- 
rals.. But while we must recognize in nature certain laws of 
disturbance, if I may so speak, through which, within certain 
limits, traits which are the result of habit or circumstance in 
the parents are communicated to their offspring, we would 
err as egregiously, did we take only these into account, with- 
out noting that infinitely stronger antagonist law of reproduc: 
tion and restoration which, by ever gravitating towards the 
original type, preserves the integrity of races, as the astrono- 
mer would, who, in constructing his orrery, recognized only 
that law of propulsion through which the planets speed 
through the heavens, without taking into account that antag- 
onist law of gravitation which, by maintaining them in their — 
orbits, insures the regularity of their movements. ‘The law 


OF DEGRADATION. 191 


of restoration would recover and right the st mned fish laid 
on its side; the law of reproduction would give limbs to the 
offspring of the mutilated saurian. We have evidence, in 
the extremeness of the degradation in these cases, that it 
cannot be a degradation hereditarily derived from accident, 
Nature is_ we find, active, not in perpetuating the accidenta' 
wooden legs and g.een patches of ancestors in their de- 
scendants, but in restoring to the offspring the true limbs 
and eyes which the parents have lost. It is, however, not 
with a theory of hereditary degrada‘ion, but a hypothesis of 
gradual development, that I have at present to deal; and 
what I have to establish as proper to the present stage of my 
argument is, that this principle of degradation really exists, 
and that the history of its progress in creation bears directly 
against the assumption that the earlier vertebrata were of a 
lower type than the vertebrata of the same ichthyic class 
which exist now.* 3 


ee 


* It will scarce be urged against the degradation theory, that 
those races which, tried by the tests of defect or misplacement of 
parts, we deem degraded, are not less fitted for carrying on what 
in their own little spheres is the proper business of life, than the 
non-degraded orders and families. The ebjection is, however, a 
possible one, and one which a single remark may serve to obviate. 
It is certainly true that the degraded families are thoroughly fit- 
ted for the performance of all the work given them to do. Tley 
greatly increase when placed in favorable circumstances, and, when 
vigorous and thriving, enjoy existence. But then the same may 
be said of all animals, without reference to their place in the 
scale ;— the mollusc is as thoroughly adapted to its circumstances 
and as fitted to accomplish the end proper to its being, as the mam 
miferous quadruped, and the mammiferous quadruped as man him. 
self; but the fact of perfect adaptation in no degree invalidates the 
other not less certain fact of difference of rank, nor proves that the 
mollusc is equal to the quadruped, or the quadruped to man. And 


192 PROGRESS 


The progress of the ichthyic tail, as recorded in geologic 
history, corresponds with that of the ichthyic limbs. And 
as in the existing state of things we find fishes that nearly 
represent, in this respect, all the great geologic periods, —\ 
say nearly, not fully, for 1 am acquainted with no fish ade- . 
quately representative of the period of the Old Red Sand- 
stone, — it may be well to cast a glance over the contemporary 
series, as illustrative of the consecutive one. In those Placoids 
of the shark family that to a large brain unite homological 
symmetry of organization, and represent the fishes of the 
first period, we find, as I have already shown, that the ver- 
tebree gradually diminish in the caudal division of the 
column, until they terminate in a point, —a circumstance 
in which they resemble not merely the betailed reptiles, but 
also all the higher mammiferous quadrupeds, and even man 
himself. And it is this peculiarity, stamped upon the less de- 
structible portions of the framework of the tail, — vertebre 
and processes, —rather than the one-sided or heterocercal 
form of the surrounding fin, composed of but a mucoidal 
substance, that constitutes its grand characteristic ; seeing 
that in some Placoid genera, such as Scyllium Stellare, the 
terminal portion of the fin is scarce less largely developed 
above than below, and that in others, as in most of the Ray 
family, the under lobe of the fin is wholly wanting. In the 
sturgeon, — one of the few Ganoids of the present time, —- we 
become sensible of a peculiar modification in this heterocer- 


ee ee eS ee 


of course, the remark eq-zally bears on the reduced as on the unele- 
vated, —on lowness of place when a result of degradation in races 
pertaining to a higher division of animals, as on lowness of place 
when a result cf the humble standing of the division to which the 
races belong. 


OF DEGRADATION. 193 


vai type of tail: the lower lobe is, we find, composed, as in 
Spinax and Scyllium, of rays exclusively ; while through the 
centre of the upper lobe there runs an acutely angular patch 
of lozenge-shaped plates, like that which runs through the 
centre of the double fins of Dipterus and the Coelacanths, 
But while in the sharks the gradually diminishing vertebra 
stand out in bold relief, and form the thickest portica of the 
tail, that which represents them in the sturgeon (the angular 
patch) is slim and thin, — slimmer in the middle than even at 
the sides;— in part a consequence, no doubt, of the want, 
in this fish, of solid vertebrae, but a consequence also of the 
extreme attenuation of the nervous cord, in its prolongation 
into the lobe of the fin. Further, the rays of the tail — 
its peculiarly ichthyic portion, which are purely mucoidal in 
Spinax, Scyllium, and Cestracion — have become osseous in 
the sturgeon. The fish has set and become fixed, as cement 
sets in a building, or colors are fixed by a mordant. And 
it is worthy of special remark that, correspondent with the 
peculiarly ichthyic development of tail in this fish, we find 
the prevailing ichthyic displacement of the fore limbs. 
Again, in the Lepidosteus, another of the true Ganoids 
which still exist, the internal angle of the upper lobe of the 
tail wholly disappears, and with the internal angle the pro- 
longation of the nervous cord. Still, however, it is what the 
tail of the sturgeon would become were the angular patch tc 
be obliterated, and rays substituted instead, — it is a tail set on 
awry. And in this fish also we find the ichthyic displacement 
of fore limb. One step more, and we arrive at the homu- 
cerca: or equal-lobed tail, which seems to attain to its 
most extreme type in those fishes in which, as in the perch 
and flounder, the last vertebral joint, either very little or very 
abruptly diminished in size, expands into broad processes 
17 


194 PROGRESS 


witout homologue in the higher animals, on which the cau- 
dal rays rest as their bases. And in by much the larger 
proportion of these fishes all the four limbs are slung round 
the neck ; — they at once exhibit the homocercal tail in its 
broadest type, and displacement of limb in its most extreme 
form. 

Now, in tracing the geologic history of the ichthyic tail, 
we find these several steps or gradations from the heterocercal 
to the homocercal, represented by periods and formations. 
The Siluran periods may be regarded as representative of that 
true heterocercal tail of the Placoids, exemplified in Spinaz, 
(page 172, fig. 48,) and Cestracion, (page 177, fig. 49.) The 
whole caudal portion of this latter animal, commencing imme- 
diately behind the ventrals, is, as becomes a true tail, slim, 
when compared with its trunk; the vertebre are of very 
considerable solidity ; the rays mucoidal; and where the 
spinal column runs into the terminal fin, it takes such an up- 
ward turn as that which the horse-jockey imparts, by the 
process of nicking, to the tails of the hunter and the race- 
horse. And with the heterocercal tail, so true in its homolo- 
gies to the tails of the higher vertebrata, we find associated, 
as has been shown, the true homological position of the fore 
limbs. With the commencement of the Old Red Sandstone 
the ganoidal tail first presents itself; and we become sensible 
of a change in the structure of the attached fin, similar to that 
exeinplified in the caudal rays of the sturgeon. As shown by 
the irregularly-angular patch of scales which in all the .true 
Coelacanths, and almost all the Dipterians,* runs through the 





* The vertebral column in the genus Diplopterus ran, as in the 
placoid genus Scylliwm, nearly through the middle of the caudal 
fin. 


OF DEGRADATION. 195 


upper lobe of the fin, and terminates in a pomnt, (see fig. 50,} 
t must have possessed the gradually diminishing vertebrae, or 


Fig. 60. 





TAIL OF OSTEOLEPIS. 


a diminishing spinal cord, their analogue ; but the rays, fairly 
set, as their state of keeping in the rocks certify, exist as nar- 
row oblong plates of solid bone ; and their anterior edges are 
strengthened by a line of osseous defences, that pass from 
scales into rays. And in harmonious accompaniment with 
this fairly stereotyped edition of the ichthyic tail, we find, in 
the fishes in which it appears, the first instance of displace- 
ment of limb, — the bases of the pectorals being removed from 
their original position, and stuck on to the nape of the neck. 
It may be remarked, in passing, that in the tails of two ganoid- 
al genera of this period, — the Coccosteus and Pterichthys, — 
the analogies traceable lie rather in the direction of the tails 
of the Rays than in those of the Sharks; and that one of 
these, the Coccosteus, seems, as has been already intimated, 
to have had no pectorals, while it is doubtful whether in the 
Pterichthys the pectorals were not attached to the shoulder, 
instead o° the head. In the Carboniferous and Permian 
systems there occur, especially among the numerous species 
of the genus Palconiscus, tails of the type exemplified by the 


196 PROGRESS 


internal angle of the tail of the sturgeon: the lozenge-shaped 
scales run in acutely angular patches through their upper lobes ; 
but such is their extreme flatness, as shown by the disposition 
of the enamelled covering, that it appears exceedingly doubt: 
ful whether any vertebral column ran beneath; — they seem 
but to have covered greatly diminished prolongations of 
the spinal cord. In the base of the Secondary division, 
—another long stage towards the existing state of things, 
— we find, with the homocercal tail, which now appears 
for the first time, numerous tails like that of the Lemdos- 
teus, (fig. 51,) of an intermediate type ;—they are rather 


Fig. 51. 





TAIL OF LEPIDOSTEUS OSSEUS. 


(ails set on awry than truly heterocercal. The dirnimshed 
cord has disappeared from among the fin rays. In the nu 
merous Lepidoid genus, and the genera Semtonotus and Tetra 
gonolepis, — all ganoidal fishes of the Secondary period 
—this intermediate style is very marked; while in then 
contemporaries of the genera Ureus, Microdon, and Pyeno- 
dus, we find the earliest examples of true homocercal tails. 
And in the Ctenoids and Cycloids of the Chalk the homo. 
cercal tail receives its fullest development. It finds bases for 


its rays in broad non-homological processes, that spread >ut 


OF DEGRADA110N. , 197 


behind abruptly-terminating vertebre, (fig. 52,) in the same 





TAIL OF PERCH 


period in which, by a strange process of degradation, the 
four ichthyic limbs are first gathered into a cluster, and hung 
about the neck.* 





* In the following diagram a few simple lines serve to exhibit 
the progress of degradation. Fig. a represents the symmetrical 
Placoids of the Silurian period, consisting of head, neck, body, tail, 
fore limbs and hinder limbs; fig. b represents those heterocercal Ga 
noids of the Old Red Sandstone, Coal Measures, and Permian System, 
in which the neck is extinguished, and the fore limbs stuck on to the 
occiput ; fig. c, those homocercal Ganoids ofthe Trias Lias, Oolite, and 


Silurian. Old Red, &c. Lias, &e. Cretaceous. 


a b c ad e 
Flacoid. Het. Ganoid. Hom. Ganoid. Ctenoid. Platessa. 


LY fs 


198 2 PROGRESS 


Iam aware. that by some very distinguished comparative 
anatomists, among the rest Professor Owen, the attachment, 
so common among fishes, of the scapular arch and the fore 
limbs to the occipital bone, is regarded, not as a displacement, 
but as a normal and primary condition of the parts. Recog- 
nizing in the scapular bones the ribs of the occipital centrum, 
the anatomists of this school of course consider them, when 
found articulated to the occiput, as in their proper and origi- 
nal place, and as in a state of natural dislocation when re- 
moved, as in all the reptiles, birds, and mammals, farther 
down. We find Professor Oken borrowing support to his hy- 
pothesis from this view. The limbs, he tells us, are simply 
ribs, that in the course of ages have been set free, and have 
become by development what they now are. And it is un 
questionably a curious and interesting fact, that there are cer 
tain animals, such as the crocodile, in which every centrum of 
the vertebral column, and of every vertebra of the head, has 
its ribs or rib-like appendages, with the exception of the oc- 
cipital centrum. And it is another equally curious fact, that 
there is another certain class of animals, such as the osseous 
horn-covered fishes, with the Sturionide, Salamandroidei, and at 
least one genus among the Placoids, (the Chimzroidei,) in which 
this occipital centrum bears as its rids the scapular bones, 
with their appendages the fore limbs. Itis the centrwm without 
ribs that is selected in these animals as the centrum to which the 





Wealden, whose tails spread out into broad terminal processes, with- 
out homologue in the higher animals; fig. d, those Acanthopterygit 
of the Chalk that, in addition to the non-homological processes, 
have both fore limbs and hinder limbs stuck round the head; while 
tig. e represents the asymmetrical Platessa, of the same period, with 
one of its eyes in the middle of its head, and the other thrust out to 
the side. 


OF DEGK DATION. {99 


scapular vids should be attached. Be it remembered, how- 
ever, that while it is unquestionably the part of the compara- 
tive anatomist to determine the relations and homologies of 
those parts of which all animals are composed, and to inter: 
pret the significancy in the scale of being of the various 
modes and forms in which they exist, it is as unquestionably 
the part of the geologist to declare their history, and the 
order of their succession in time. The questions which fall 
to be determined by the geologist and anatomist are entire ly 
different. It is the function of the anatomist to decide re- 
garding the high and the low, the typical and the aberrant : 
and so, beginning at what is lowest or highest in the scale, or 
least or most symmetrical in type, he passes through the in- 
termediate forms to the opposite extreme: and such is the 
order natural and proper to his science. It is the vocation of 
the geologist, on the other hand, to decide regarding the early 
and the late. It is with time, not with rank, that he has tc 
deal. Nor is it in the least surprising that he should seem at 
issue with the comparative anatomist, when, in classifying his 
groupes of organized being according to the periods of their 
appearance, there is an order of arrangement forced upon 
him, different from that which, on an entirely different prin- 
ciple, the anatomist pursues. Nor can there be a better 
illustration of a collision of this kind, than the one furnished 
by the case in point. That peculiarity of structure which, as 
the lowest in the vertebral skeleton, is to the comparative 
anatomist the primary and original one, and which, as such, 
furnishes him with his starting point, is to the geologist n ot 
drimary, but secondary, simply because it was not primary 
but secondary, in the order of its occurrence. It belongs, 
so far as we yet know, not to the first period of verte 
brate existence, but to the second ; and appears in geologic 


200 PROGRESS 


history as does that savage state which certain philosophers 
have deemed the original condition of the human species, in 
the history of civilization, when read by the light of the Re- 
vealed Record, under the shadow of those gigantic ruins of 
the East that date only a few centuries after the Flood. It is 
found to be a degradation first introduced during the lapse of 
an intermediate age, — not the normal condition which ob- 
tained during the long cycles of the primal one. It indicates, no. 
the starting point from which the race of creation began, but the 
stage of retrogradation beyond it at which the pilgrims who set 
out in a direction opposite to that of the goal first arrived.* 


$$ $$$ 


* I would, however, respectfully suggest, that that theory of cer- 
ebral vertebre, on which, in this question, the comparative anato- 
mists proceed as their principle, and which finds as little support in 
the geologic record from the actual history of the fore limbs as from 
the actual history of the bones of the cranium, may be more inge- 
nious than sound. It is a shrewd circumstance, that the rocks refuse 
to testify in its favor. Agassiz, I find, decides against it on other 
than geological grounds; and his conclusion is certainly rendered 
not the less worthy of careful consideration by the fact that, yielding 
to the force of evidence, his views on the subject underwent a thor- 
ough change. He had first held, and then rejected it. “I have 
shared,” he says, “ with a multitude of other naturalists, the opinion 
which regards the cranium as composed of vertebree; and I am con- 
sequently in some degree called upon to point out the motives which 
have induced me to reject it.” 

«“ M. Oken,” he continues, “ was the first to assign this signification 
to the bones of the cranium. The new doctrine he expounded was 
received in Germany with great enthusiasm by the school of the 
philosophers of nature. The author conceived the cranium to con- 
sist of three vertebre, and the basal occipital, the sphenoid, and the 
ethmoid, were regarded as the central parts of these cranial vertebrae. 
On these alleged bodies of vertebra, the arches enveloping the cen- 
tral parts of the nervous system were raised, while on the opposite 
side were attached the inferior pieces, which went to form the vege- 
tative arch destined to embrace the intestinal canal and the large 
vessels. It would be too tedious to enumerate ir this place the 


OF DEGRADATION. 201 


This fact of aegradation, strangely indicated in geologic 
history, with reference to all the greater divisions of the 
animal kingdom, has often appeared to me a surpassingly 
wonderful one. We can see but imperfectly, in those twi- 
light depths to which all such subjects necessarily belong , 
ani yet at times enough does appear to show us what a 
very superficial thing infidelity may be. The general ad- 
vance in creation has been incalculably great. The lower 
divisions of the vertebrata preceded the higher;—the fish 


changes which each author introduced, in order to modify this mat- 
ter so as to make it suit his own views. Some went the length of 
affirming that the vertebre of the head were as complete as those of 
the trunk; and, by means of various dismemberments, separations, 
and combinations, all the forms of the cranium were referred to the 
vertebre, by admitting that the number of pieces was invariably 
fixed in every head, and that all the vertebrata, whatever might be 
their organization in other respects, had in their heads the same 
number of points of ossification. At a later period, what was erro- 
neous in this manner of regarding the subject was detected; but 
the idea of the vertebral composition of the head was still retained. 
It was admitted as a general law, that the cranium was composed of 
three primitive vertebra, as the embryo is of three blastodermic leaf- 
lets; but that these vertebra, like the leaflets, existed only ideally, 
and that their presence, although easily demonstrated in certain cases, 
could only be slightly traced, and with the greatest difficulty, in 
other instances. The notion thus laid down of the virtual existence 
of cranial vertebre did not encounter very great opposition; it could 
not be denied that there was a certain general resemblance between 
the osseous case of the brain and the rachidian canal; the occipital, 
in particular, had all the characteristic features of a vertebra. But 
whenever an attempt was made to push the analogy further, and te 
determine rigorously the anterior vertebre of the cranium, the ob- 
server found himself arrested by insurmountable obstacles, and he 
was obliged always to revert to the virtual existence. 

“In order to explain my idea clearly, let me have recourse to an 
example. It is certain that organized bodies are sometimes endowed 
with virtual qualities, which, at a certain period of the being’s life, 
elude diss2tion, and all our means of investigation. It is thus, that 


202 PPOGRESS 


preceded the reptile, the reptile preceded the bird, the bird 
preceded the mammiferous quadruped, and the mammiferous 
quadruped preceded man. And yet, is there one of these 
great divisions in which, in at least some prominent feature, 
the present, through this mysterious element of degradation, 
is not inferior to the past? There was a time in which the 
ichthyic form constituted the highest example of life ; but 
the seas during that period did not swarm with fish of the 
degraded type. There was, in like manner, a time when all 





at the moment of their origin, the eggs of all animals have such a 
cesemblance to each other, that it would be impossible to distinguish, 
even by the aid of the most powerful microscope, the ovarial egg of 
a craw-fish, for example, from that of true fish. And yet who would 
deny that beings in every respect different from each other exist in 
these eggs? It is precisely because the difference manifests itself at 
alater period, in proportion as the embryo develops itself, that we 
are authorized to conclude, that, even from the earliest period, the 
eggs were different, — that each had virtual qualities proper to itself, 
although they could not be discovered by our senses. If, on the con- 
trary, any one should find two eggs perfectly alike, and should 
observe two beings perfectly identical issue from them, he would 
greatly err if he ascribed to these eggs different virtual qualities. It 
is therefore necessary, in order to be in a condition to suppose that 
virtual properties peculiar to it are concealed in an animal, that these 
properties should manifest themselves once, in some phase or other 
of its development. Now, applying this principle to the theory of 
cranial vertebrae, we should say, that if these vertebre virtually exist 
in the adult, they must needs show themselves in reality, at a certain 
period of development. If, on the contrary, they are found neither 
in the embryo nor the adult, I am of opinion that we are entitled 
likewise to dispute their virtual existence. 

«‘Here, however, an objection may be made to me, ace from 
the physiological value of the vertebrae, the function cf which, as is 
well known, is, on the one hand, to furnish a solid support to the 
muscular contractions which determine the movements of the trunk, 
and, on the other, to protect the centres of the nervous system, by 
forming a more or less solid case completely around them. The 
bodies of the vertebre are particularly destined to the first of these 


OF DEGRADATION 203 


the carnivera and all the herbivorous quadrupeds were repre: 
sented by reptiles; but there are no such magnificent reptiles 
on the earth now as reigned over it then. There was an 
after time, when birds seem to have been the sole represen- 
tatives of the warm-blooded animals ; but we find, from the 
prints of their feet left in sandstone, that the tallest men 
might have 


“Walked ander their huge legs, and peeped about.” 


Further, there was an age when the quadrupedal mammals 


re eg 


offices ; the neurapophyses to the second. What can be more natu- 
ral than to admit, from the consideration of this, that in the head, 
the bodies of the vertebree diminish in proportion as the moving 
finction becomes lost, while the neurapophyses are considerably de- 
veloped for protecting the brain, the volume of which is very consid- 
erable, when compared with that of the Spinal marrow? Have we 
not an example of this fact in the vertebre of the tail, where the 
ueurapophyses become completely cbliterated, and a simple cylin- 
drical body alone remains ? Now, may it not *. the case, that in the 
head, the bodies of the vertebre have disappeared ; and that, in con- 
Sequence, there is a prolongation of the cord only as far as the 
moving functions of the vertebra extend? There is some truth in 
this argument, and it would be difficult to refute it ¢ priort. But it 
loses all its force the moment that we enter upon a detailed examin- 
ation of the bones of the head. Thus, what would we call, accord- 
ing to this hypothesis, the principal sphenoid, the great wings of the 
sphenoid, and the ethmoid, which form the floor of the cerebral cay 
ity? It may be said they are apophyses. But the apophyses pro- 
tect the nervous centres only on the side and above. It may be 
said that they are the bodies of the vertebre. But they are formed 
without the concurrence of the dorsal cord; they cannot, therefore, 
oe the bodies of the vertebra. It must therefore be allowed, that 
these bones at least do not enter into the vertebral type; that they 
are in some measure peculiar. And if this be the case with them, 
why may not the other protective plates be equally independent of 
the vertebral type; the more so, because the relations of the fron- 
tals and parietals vary so much, that it would be almost impossible 
to assign to them a constant place?” 


204 PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION. 


were the magnates of creation ; but it was an age in which 
the sagacious elephant, now extinct, save in the comparatively 
small Asiatic and African circles, and restricted to two 
species, was the inhabitant of every country of the Old 
World, from its southern extremity to the frozen shores of 
the northern ocean ; and when vast herds of a closely allied 
and equally colossal genus occupied its place in the New. 
And now, in the times of the high-placed human dynasty, — 
of those formally delegated monarchs of creation, whose 
nature it is to look behind them upon the past, and before 
hem, with mingled fear and hope, upon the future, — do we 
aot as certainly see the elements of a state of ever-sinking 
Jegradation, which is to exist for ever, as of a state of ever- 
increasing perfectibility, to which there is to be no end ? 
Nay, of a higher race, of which we know but little, this 
much we at least know, that they long since separated into 
two great classes, — that of the “ elect angels, and of an 
gels that kept not their first estate ” 


THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS. 205 


EVIDENCE OF THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS --9F THE 
FOSSIL FLORA. 


ANCIENT TREE, 


Arter dwelling at such length on the earlier fishes, it may 
seem scarce necessary to advert to their lower contemporaries 
the mollusca, — that great division of the animal xingdom 
which Cuvier places second in the descending order, in his 
survey of the entire series, and first among the inverte- 
brates ; and which Oken regards as the division out of which 
the immediately preceding class of the vertebral animals have 
been developed. “The fish,” he says, “is to be viewed as a 
mussel, from between whose shells a monstrous abdomen 
has grown out.” ‘There is, however, a peculiarity in the mol- 
luscan group of the Silurian system, to which I must be per- 
mitted briefly to refer, as, to employ the figure of Sterne, it 
presents “‘ two handles” of an essentially different kind, and 
as in all such two-handled cases, the mere special pleader is 
sure to avail himself of only the handle which best suits his 
purpose for the time. 

Cuvier’s first and highest class of the mollusca is formed 
of what are termed the Cephalopods, — a class of creatures 
possessed of great freedom of motion: they can walk, swim, 


aad seize their prey; they have what even the lowest fishes 
18 


206 EVIDENCE OF 


such as the lancelet, want, —a brain enclosed in a cartilagi- 
nous cavity in the head, and perfectly formed organs of sight ; 
they possess, too, what is found in no other mollusc, — organs 
of hearing ; and in sagacity and activity they prove more than 
matches for the smaller fishes, many of which they overmas- 
ier and devour. With this highest class there contrasts an 
exceedingly low molluscous class at the bottom of the scaie, 
or, at least, at what is now the bottom of the scale ; for they 
constitute Cuvier’s fifth class; while his sixth and last, the Cir- 
rhopodes, has been since withdrawn from the molluscs alto- 
gether, and placed in a different division of the animal king- 
dom. And this low class, the Brachiopods, are creatures that, 
living in bivalve shells, unfurnished with spring hinges to throw 
them open, and always fast anchored to the same spot, can but 
thrust forth, through the interstitial chinks of their prison- 
houses, spiral arms, covered with cilia, and winnow the water 
for a living. Now, it so happens that the molluscan group of 
the Silurian system is composed chiefly of these two extreme 
classes. It contains some of the other forms; but they are 
few in number, and give no character to the rocks in which 
they occur. There was nothing by which I was more im- 
pressed, in a visit to a Silurian region, than that in its an- 
cient graveyards, as in those of the present day, though in 
a different sense, the high and the low should so invariably 
meet together. It is, however, not impossible that, in even 
the present state of things, a similar union of the extreme 
forms of the marine mollusca may be taking place in deep- 
sea deposits. Most of the intermediate forms provided with 
shells capable of preservation, such as the shelled Gastero 
poda and the Conchifers, are either littoral, or restricted to 
comparatively small depths; whereas the Brachiopoda are 
deep-sea shells ; and the Cephalopoda may be found voyaging 


THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS 207 


far from land, in the upper strata of the sea above them. Even 
in tae seas that surround our ownisland, the Brachiopodous mol- 
luses — terebratula and crania — have been found, ever since 
deep-sea dredging became common, to be not very rare shells ; 
and in the Mediterranean, where they are less rare still, 
fleets of Argonauts, the representatives of a highly organized 
family of the Cephalopods, to which it is now believed the 
Bellerophon of the Paleozoic rocks belonged, may be seen 
skimming along the surface, with sail and oar, high over the 
profound depths in which they lie. And, of course, when 
ceath comes, that comes to high and low, the remains of both 
Argonautsand Brachiopods must lie together at the bottom, in 
beds almost totally devoid of the intermediate forms. 

Now, the author of the “ Vestiges,” in maintaining his 
hypothesis, suspends it on the handle furnished him by the 
‘mmense abundance of the Silurian Brachiopods. The Silu- 
“lan period, he says, exhibits “a scanty and most defective 
development of life ; so much so, that Mr. Lyell calls it, par 
excellence, the age of Brachiopods, with reference to the by 
no means exalted bivalve shell-fish which forms its pre- 
dominant class. Such being the actual state of the case, | 
must persist in describing even the fauna of this age, which 
we now know was not the first, as, generally speaking, such 
a humble exhibition of the animal kingdom as we might ex- 
pect, upon the development theory, to find at an early stage 
of the history of organization.”” The reader will at once dis- 
cern the fallacy here. The Silurian period was peculiarly 
an age of Brachiopods, for in no other period were Brachio- 
pods so numerous, specifically or individually, or of such size 
or importance; whereas it was not so peculiarly an age of 
Cephalopods, for these we find introduced in still greater num: 
bers during the Liasic and Oolitic periods. In 1848, when 


208 EVIDENCE OF 


Professor Edward Forbes edited the Paleontological map of 
Britain and Ireland, which forms one of the very admirable 
series of “Johnstone’s Physical Atlas,” the Cephalopods of 
the Silurian rocks of England and Wales were estimated at 
forty-eight species, and the Brachiopods at one hundred and 
fifty; whereas at the same date there were two hundied 
and five Cephalopods of the Oolitic formations enumerated, 
and but fifty-four Brachiopods. It is the molluscs of the infe- 
rior, not thos2 of the superior class, that constitute (with their 
contemporaries the Trilobites) the characteristic fossils of the 
Silurian rocks; and hence the propriety of the distinctive 
name suggested by Sir Charles Lyell. But in the develop- 
ment question, what we have specially to consider is, not the 
numbers of the low, but the standing of the high. A country 
may be distinctively a country of flocks ana herds, or a country 
of the carnivorous mammalia, or, like New South Wales or 
the Galapagos, a country of marsupial animals or of reptiles. 
Its human inhabitants may be merely a few hunters or shep- 
herds, too inconsiderable in numbers, and too much like 
their brethren elsewhere, to give it any peculiar standing as 
a home of men. But in estimating the highest point in the 
scale to which the animal kingdom has attained within its 
limits, it is of its few men, not of its many beasts, that we 
must take note. And the point to be specially decided re- 
garding the organisms of the Silurian system, in this ques- 
tion, is, not the proportion in nwmber which the lower forms 
bore to the higher, but the exact rank which the higher bore 
in the scale of existence. Did the system furnish but a 
single Cephalopod or a single fish, we would yet have as 
certainly to determine that the chain of being reached as high 
as the Cephalopod or the fish, as if the remains of these crea-_ 
tures constituted its most abundant fossils. The chain of 


THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS. 209 


animal life reached quite as high on the evening of the sixth 
day of creation, when the human family was restricted to a 
single pair, as 1t does now, when our statists reckon up by 
millions the inhabitants of the greater capitals of the world ; 
and the special pleader who, in asserting the contrary, would 
insist on determining the point, not by the rank of the men 
of Eden, but by the number of minnows or sticklebacks that 
swarmed in its rivers, might be perhaps deemed ingenious in 
his expedients, but certainly not very judicious in the use of 
them. It is worthy of remark, however, that the Brachiopods 
of those Paleozoic periods in which the group occupied such 
large space in creation, consisted of greatly larger and more 
smportant animals than any which it contains in the present 
day. It has yielded to what geological history shows to be 
the common fate, and sunk into a state of degradation and 
decline. : . 
The geological history of the vegetable, like that of the 
animal kingdom, has been pressed into the service of the 
development hypothesis; and certainly their respective 
courses, both in actual arrangement and in their relation to 
human knowledge, seem wonderfully alike. It is not much 
more than twenty years since it was held that no exogenous 
plant existed during the Carboniferous period. The frequent 
occurrence of Conifers in the Secondary deposits had been 
conclusively determined from numerous specimens; but. 
founding on what seemed a large amount of negative evi 
dence, it was concluded that, previous to the Liasic age 
nature had failed to achieve a tree, and that the rich vege 
tation of the Coal Measures had been exclusively composed 
of magnificent immaturities of the vegetable kingdom, — 
of gigantic ferns and club-mosses, that attained to the size of 


forest trees, and of thickets of the swamp-loving horsetail 
18* 


210 EVIDENCE OF 


family of plants, that well nigh rivalled in height those for 
ests of masts which darken the rivers of our great commercial 
cities. Such was the view promulgated by M. Adolphe 
Brongniart; and it may be well to remark that, so far as the 
evidence on which it was based was positive, the view was 
sound It is a fact, that inferior orders of plants were de- 
veloped in those ages in a style which, in their present state 
of degradation, they never exemplify: they toox their place, 
not, as now, among the pigmies and abortions of creation, but 
among its tallest and goodliest productions. It is, however, 
not a fact that they were the highest vegetable forms of their 
time. True exoge.1ous trees also existed in great numbers 
and of vast size. In various localities in the coal fields 
of both England and Scotland, — such as Lennel Braes and 
Allan Bank in Berwickshire, High-Heworth, Fellon, Gates- 
head, and Wideopen near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and in 
quarries to the west of the city of Durham, — the most 
abundant fossils of the system are its true woods. In the 
quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, three huge trunks have 
been laid open during the last twenty years, within the space 
of about a hundred and fifty yards, and two equally massy 
trunks, within half that space, in the neighboring quarry of 
Granton, all low in the Coal Measures. They lie diagonally 
athwart the strata, — at an angle of about thirty, — with the 
nether and weightier portion of their boles below, like snag: 
in the Mississippi; and we infer, from their general direction, 
that the stream to which they reclined must have flowed from 
nearly north-east to south-west. ‘The current was probably 
that of a noble river, which reflected on its broad bosom the 
shadow of many a stately tree. With the exception of one 
of the Granton specimens, which still retains its strong-kneed 
roots, they are all mere portions of trees, rounded at both 


THE FOSSIL FLORa. Qik 


ends as if by attrition or decay; and yet one of these por- 
tions measures about six feet in diameter by sixty-one feet in 
length another four feet in diameter by seventy feet in 
length; and the others, cf various thickness, but all bulky 
enough to equal the masts of large vessels, range in length 
from thirty-six to forty-seven feet. It seems strange to one who 
derives his supply of domestic fuel from the Dalkeith and 
Falkirk coal-fields, that the Carboniferous flora could ever have 
been described as devoid of trees. I can scarce take up a piece 
of coal from beside my study fire, without detecting in it frag- 
ments of carbonized wood, which almost always exhibit the 
characteristic longitudinal fibres, and not unfrequently the 
medullary rays. Even the trap-rocks of the district enclose, 
in some instances, their masses of lignite, which present in 
their transverse sections, when cut by the lapidary, the net- 
like reticulations of the conifere. The fossil botanist, who 
devoted himself chiefly to the study of microscopic structure, 
would have to decide, from the facts of the case, not that 
trees were absent during the Carboniferous period, but that, 
in consequence of their having been present in amazing 
numbers, their remains had entered more palpably and exten- 
sively into the composition of coal than those of any other 
vegetable.* So far as is yet known, they all belonged to the 





* It is stated by Mr. Witham, that, “except in a few instances, he 
had ineffectually tried, with the aid of the microscope, to obtain some 
insight into the structure of coal. Owing,” he adds, “to its great 
opacity, which is probably due to mechanical pressure, the action of 
chemical affinty, and the percolation of acidulous waters, all traces 
of organization appear to have been obliterated.’’ I have heard the 
late Mr. Sanderson, who prepared for Mr. Witham most of the speci- 
mens figured in his well-known work on the * Internal Structure of 
Fossil Vegetables,” and from whom the materials of his statement on 


212 EVIDENCE OF 


two great divisions of the coniferous family, araucarians and 
pines. The huge trees of Craigleith and Granton were of the 
former tribe,and approximate more nearly to Altingta excelsa, 


Fig. 53. 





ALTINGIA EXCELSA, (NORFOLK-ISLAND PINE.) 


From a young specimen in the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. 


i ee ee ees 





this point seem to have been derived, make a similar remark. It was 
rare, he said, to find a bit of coal that exhibited the organic struc- 
ture. The case, however, is far otherwise; and the ingenious me- 
chanic and his employer were misled, simply by the circumstances, 
that it is rare to find pieces of coal which exhibit the ligneous fibre, 
existing in a state of keeping solid enough to stand the grinding of 
the lapidary’s wheel. The lignite usually occurs in thin layers of a 
substance resembling soft charcoal, at which, from the loose adhesion 
of the fibres, the coal splits at a stroke; and as it cannot be prepared 
as a transparency, it is best examined by a Stanhope lens. It will 
be found, tried in this manner, that so far is vegetable fibre from 
being of rare occurrence in coal, — our Scotch coal at least, —that 
almost every cubic inch contains its hundreds, nay, its thousands, of 
cells 


THE FOSSIL FLORA. 213 


the Norfolk-Island pine, — a noble araucarian, that rears its 
proud head from a hundred and sixty to two hundred feet 
over the soil, and exhibits a green and luxuriant breadth of 
foliage rare among t1e Coniferae, — than any other living tree. 
Beyond the Coal Measures terrestrial plants become ex- 
tremely rare. The fossil botanist, on taking leave of the 
lower Carboniferous beds, quits the land, and sets out to sea ; 
and it seems in no way surprising, that the specimens which 
he there ad¢s to his herbarium should consist mainly of Fuca- 
cee and Confervee. Thedevelopment hypothesis can borrow 
no support from the simple fact, that while a high terrestrial 
vegetation grows upon dry land, only alge grow in the sea; 
and even did the Old Red Sandstone and Silurian systems fur- 
nish, as their vegetable organisms, fucoids exclusively, the 
evidence would amount to no more than simply this, that the 
and of the Paleozoic periods produced plants of the land, and 
he sea of the Palzozoic periods produced plants of the sea 
In the Upper Old Red Sandstone, —the formation of the 
Holoptychius and the Stagonolepis,—the only vegetable re 
iains which I have yet seen are of a character so exceedingly 
obscure and doubtful, that all I could venture to premise re- 
garding them is, that they seem to be the fragments of sorely 
comminuted fucoids. In the formation of the Middle Old 
Red, — that of the Cephalaspis and the gigantic lobster of Car- 
mylie, — the vegetable remains are at once more numerous and 
better defined. I have detected among the gray micaceous 
sandstones of Forfarshire a fucoid furnished with a thick, 
squat stem, that branches into numerous divergent leaflets or 
fronds, of a slim pavallelogrammical, grass-like form, and 
which, as a whole, somewhat resembles the scourge of cords 
attached to a handle with which a boy whips his top. And 


214 EVIDENCE OF 


Professor Fleming describes a still more remarkable vegets 
ble organism of the same formation, “ which, occurring in 
the form of circular, flat patches, composed each of numer- 
ous smaller contiguous circular pieces, is altogether no unlike 
what might be expected to result from a compressed berry, 
such as the bramble or rasp.” In the Lower Old Red, — 
the formation of the Coccosteus and Cheiracanthus,—the re: 
mains of fucoids are more numerous still. There are gray 
slaty beds among the rocks of Navity, that owe their fissile 
character mainly to their layers of carbonized weed; and 
“among the rocks of Sandy-Bay, near Thurso,” says Mr. 
Dick, “the dark impressions of large fucoids are so numer- 
ous, that they remind one of the interlaced boughs and less 
bulky pine-trunks that lie deep in our mosses.” A portion of 
a stem from the last locality, which I owe to Mr. Dick, meas 
ures three inches in diameter ; but the ill-compacted cellulay 
tissue of the alge is but indifferently suited for preservation ; 
and so it exists as a mere coaly film, scarcely half a line in 
thickness. | 
The most considerable collection of the Lower Old Red 
fucoids which I have yet seen is that of the Rev. Charles 
Clouston of Sandwick, in Orkney,—a skilful cultivator of 
geological science, who has specially directed his paleontol- 
ogical inquiries on the vegetable remains of the flagstones of 
his district, as the department in which most remained to be 
done ; but his numerous specimens only serve to show what 
a poverty-stricken flora that of the ocean of the Lower Old 
Red Sandstone must have been. I could detect among them 
but two species of plants;— the one an imperfectly pre 
served vegetable, more nearly resembling a club-moss than 
aught else which I have seen, but which bore on ‘ts surface 


THE FOSSIL FLORA. 216 


instead of the well-marked scales of the Lycopodiacea, irreg 
ular rows of tubercles, that, when elongated in the profile 
as sometimes happens, might be mistaken for minute, ill-de 
fined leaves; the other, a smooth-stemmed fucoid, existing 
on the stone in most cases as a mere film, in which, however, 
thickly-set longitudinal fibres are occasionally traceable, and 
which may be always distinguished from the other by its 
sharp-edged outline, and from the circumstance that its stems 
continue to retain the same diameter for considerable distances, 
after throwing off at acute angles numerous branches nearly 
as bulky as themselves. In a Thurso specimen, about two 
feet in length, which I owe to the-kindness of Mr. Dick, there 
are stems continuous throughout, that, though they ramify 
in that space into from six to eight branches, are nearly as 
thick atop as at bottom. They are the remains, in all proba- 
bility, of a long, flexible weed, that may have somewhat 
resembled those fucoids of the intertropical seas, which, 
streaining slantwise in the tide, rise not unfrequently to the 
surface in from fifteen to twenty fathoms of water; and 
as, notwithstanding their obscurity, they are among the most 
perfect specimens of their class ye found, and contrast with 
the stately araucarians of the Coal Measures, in a style which 
cannot fail to delight the heart of every assertor of the de- 
velopment hypothesis, I present them to the reader from: Mr. 
Dick’s specimen, in a figure (fig. 54) which, however 
slight its interest, has at least the merit of being true. 
The stone exhibits specimens of the two species of Mr. 
Clouston’s collection, — the sharp-edged, _fively-striated 
weed, a, and that roughened by tubercles, 4 ; which, besides 
the distinctive character manifested on_ its surface, dif: 
fers from the other in rapidly losing breath with every 
branch which it throws off, and in consequence, runs soon 


216 EVIDENCE OF 


toa point. The cut on the opposite page (fig. 55) repre 
sents not inadequately the cortical peculiarities of the two 


Fig. 54. 


. 
-G 
« 
- 
= 
— 

_—_ 
~~ 


ae \ 


: ww scene . sant 
ALLL { a eyee 





FUCOIDS OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
a. Smooth-stemmed species. b. Tubercled specvas 


(One sixth nat. size, linear.) 


THE FOSSIL FLORA. Q17 


Fig. 55. 














a Smooth-stemmed species. b. Tubercied specres. 


(Natural size.) 


species when best preserved. The surface of the tubercled one 
will pernaps remind the Algologist of the knobbed surface of 
the thong or receptacle of Himanthalia lorea, a recent fucoid, 
common on the western coast of Scotland, but rare on the 
east. An Orkney specimen lately sent me by Mr. William 
Watt, from a quarry at Skaill, has much the appearance 
of one of the smaller ferns, such as the moor-worts, sea 
spleen-worts, or maiden-hairs. It exists as an impression 
in diluted black, on a ground of dark gray, and has so little 
sharpness of outline, that, like minute figures in oil-paintings, 
it seems more distinct when viewed at arm’s length than 
when microscopically examined ; but enough remains to show 
that it must have been a terrestrial, not a marine plant. The 
accompanying print (fig. 56) may be regarded as no un 
faithful representation of this unique fossil in its state ot 
imperfect keeping. ‘The vegetation of the Silurian system, 
from its upper beds down till where we reach the zero of life, 
is, like that of the Old Red Sandstone, almost exclusively 
fucoidal. In the older fossiliferous deposits of the system in 
Sweden, Russia, the Lake Districts of England, Canada, and 


the United States, fucoids occur, to the exclusion, so far as is 
19 


218 EVIDENCE OF 


— 


\ 
J 
H 
HR 
WW 
i 
‘| all 
Bx\\ 5 4H) 
x \l 
i 
Ny 
i 





FRAN? OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE. 


(Natural size.) 


yet known, of every other vegetable form ; and such is their 
abundance in some localities, that they render the argilla- 
ceous rocks in which they lie diffused, capable of being fired 
as an alum slate, and exist in others as seams of a compact 
anthracite, occasionally used as fuel. They also occur in 
those districts of Wales in which the place and sequence 
of the various Silurian formations were first determined, 
though apparently in a state of keeping from which little can 
be premised regarding their original forms. Sir Roderick 
Murchison sums up his notice of the vegetable remains of the 
system in the province whence it derives its name, by stating. 
that he had submitted his specimens to “ Mr. Robert Brown 
and Dr. Greville, and that neither of these eminent botanists 
were able to say much more regarding them than that they 
were fucoid-like bodies.” 

Such are the vegetable crganisms of the Old Red Sand- 
stone and Silurian systems: they are the remains of the 


THE FOSSIL FLORA. 219 


ancient marine plants of ancient marine deposits and, as such, 
iend quite as little support to the developmer hypothesis as 
tne recent alge of our existing seas. The case, stated in its 
most favorable form, amounts simply to this, — that at certain 
early periods, — represented by the Upper and Lower Silu- 
rian and the Old Red deposits, — the seas produced sea-plants ; 
and that, at a certain later period, — that of the Carboniferous 
system, — the land produced land-plants. But even this. did 
it stand alone, would be a too favorable statement. I have 
seen, on one occasion, the fisherman bring up with his nets, 
far in the open sea, a wild rose-bush, that, though it still hore 
its characteristic thorns, was encrusted with serpula, and 
laden with pendulous lobularia. It had been swept from its 
original habitat by some river in flood, that had undermined 
and torn down the bank on which it grew; and after float: 
ing about, mayhap for months, had become so saturatea 
with water, that it could float no longer. And in that single 
rose-bush, dragged up to the light and air from its piace 
among Sertularia, Flustra, Serpula, and the deep-sea fucoids, 
I had as certain an evidence of the existence of the dico- 
tyledonous plant, as if I had all the families of the Rosaceze 
before me. Now, we are furnished by the more ancient for- 
nations with evidence regarding the existence of a terres- 
rial vegetation, such as that which the rose-bush in this case 
supplied. We cannot expect that the proofs should be nu- 
merous. In the chart of the Pacific attached to the better 
editions of ** Cook’s Voyages,” there are several notes along 
the tract of the great navigator, that indicate where, in mid 
ocean, trees or fragments of trees had been picked up. 
These entries, however, are but few, though they belong to 
al] the three voyages together: if J remember aright, there 
are only five entries in all, — two in the Northern, and thres 


220 EVIDENCE OF 


in the Southern Pacific. The floating shrub or tree, at 4 
great distance from land, is of rare occurrence in even the 
present scene of things, though the breadth of land be great, 
and trees numerous ; and in the times of the Silurian and Old 
Red Sandstone systems, when the breadth of land was ap- 
parently not great, and trees and shrubs, in consequence, not 
numerous, it must have been of rarer occurrence still. We 
learn, however, from Sir Charles Lyell, that in the “* Hamil- 
ton group of the United States, —a series of beds that cor- 
responds in many of its fossils with the Ludlow rocks of 
England, — plants allied to the Lepidodendra of the Carbonif- 
erous type are abundant; and that in the lower Devonian 
strata of New York the same plants occur associated with 
ferns.” And I am able to demonstrate, from an interesting 
fossil at present before me, that there existed in the period 
of the Lower Old Red Sandstone vegetable forms of a class 
greatly higher than either Lepidodendra or ferns. 

In my little work on the Old Red Sandstone, | have referred 
to an apparent lignite of the Lower Old Red of Cromarty, 
which presented, when viewed by the microscope, marks of 
he internal fibre. The surface, when under the glass, re- 
sembled, I said,a bundle of horse-hairs lying stretched in par- 
allel lines: and in this specimen alone, it was added, had | 
found aught in the Lower Old Red Sandstone approaching to 
proof of the existence of dry land. About four years ago I had 
this lignite put stringently to the question by Mr. Sanderson 
and deeply interesting was the result. I must first mention, 
however, that there cannot rest the shadow of a doubt regard- 
ing the place of the organism in the geologic scale. It is une- 
qu.vocally a fossil of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. I found n 
partially embedded, with many other nodules half-disinterred . 
hy the sea, in an ichthyolitic deposit, a few hundred yards te 


THE FOSSIL FLORA. 221 


the east of the town of Cromarty, which occurs more than 
four hundred feet over the Great Conglomerate base of ‘he 
system. A nodule that lay immediately beside it contained a 
well-preserved specimen of the Coccosteus Decipiens ; and in 
the nodule in which the lignite itself is contained, (fig. 57,) 





L:GNITE OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE, 


(One third nat. size, linear.) 


the practised eye may detect a scattered group of scales of 
Diplacanthus, a scarce less characteristic organism of the lowei 
formation. And what, asks the reader, is the character of 
this very ancient vegetable, —the most ancient, by three 
whole formations, that has presented its internal structure 
tc the microscope ? Is it as low in the scale of development 
as in the geological scale ? Does this venerable Adam of the 
forest appear, lixe the Adam of the infidel, as a squalid, ill 
formed savage, with a rugged shaggy nature, which it would 
require the suggestive necessities of many ages painfully tu 
tick into civilization? Or does it appear rather like the Adam 


19 


222 ANCIENT CONIFER. 


of the poet and the theologian, independent, in its instanta: 
neously-derived perfection, of all after development ? 


‘«‘ Adam, the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons.” 


(s its tissue vascular or cellular, or, like that of some of the 
cryptogamia, intermediate? Or what, in fine, is the nature 
and bearing of its mute but emphatic testimony, on that doc- 
trine of progressive development of late so strangely resus 
citated ? 

In the first place, then, this ancient fossil is a true wood, — 
1 Dicotyledonous or Polycotyledonous Gymnosperm, that, like 
‘he pines and larches of our existing forests, bore naked seeds, 
which, in their state of germination, developed either double 
lobes to shelter the embryo within, or shot out a fringe of ver- 
ticillate spikes, which performed the same protective func- 
tions, and that, as it increased in bulk year after year, received 
its accessions of growth in outside layers. In the transverse 
section the cells bear the reticulated appearance which distin- 
guish the conifere, (fig. 58, a ;) the lignite had been exposed 
in its bed to a considerable degree of pressure; and so the open- 
ings somewhat resemble the meshes of a net that has been 
jrawn a little awry ; but no general obliteration of their origi- 
nal character has taken place, save in minute patches, where 
they have been injured by compression or the bituminizing 
process. All the tubes indicated by the openings are, as in re- 
cent conifers, of nearly the same size; and though, as in 
many of the more ancient lignites, there are no indications of 
annual rings, the direction of the medullary rays is distinctly 
traceable. The longitudinal sections are rather less distinct 
than the transverse one; in the section parallel to the ra- 
dius of the sten or bole the circular disks of the conifers 


ANCIENi “ONIFER. 228 





INTERNAL STRU TURE OF LIGNITE OF LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE 
a. Transverse section. 
b. Longitudinal section, (parallel to radius, or medullary rays.) 
c. Longitudinal section, (tangental, or parallel to the bark.) 
(Mag. forty diameters.) 


were at first not at all detected; and, as since shown by 4 
very fine microscope, they appear simply as double and triple 
lines of undefined dots, (4,) that somewhat resemble the stip. 
pled markings of the miniature painter; nor are the open- 
ings of the medullary rays frequent in the tangental section 
(i. e. that parallel to the bark,) (c ;) but nothmg can be better 
defined than the peculiar arrangement of the woody fibre 
and the longitudinal form of the cells. Such is the character: 
of this, the most ancient of lignites yet found, that vields te 


224 ANCIENT CONIFER. 


the microscope the peculiarities of its original structuce. We 
find in it an unfailen Adam,— not a half-developed savage.* 
The olive leaf which the dove brought to Noah established 
at least three important facts, and indicated a few more. 
[t showed most conclusively that there was dry land, that 
there were olive trees, and that the climate of the sur- 
rounding region, whatever change it might have undergone, 
was still favorable to the development of vegetable life. 


Se 


* On a point of such importance I find it necessary to strengthen 
my testimony by auxiliary evidence. The following is the judg- 
ment, on this ancient petrifaction, of Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh, — 
confessedly one of our highest living authorities in that division of 
fossil botany which takes cognizance of the internal structure of 
lignites, and decides, from their anatomy, their race and family : — 


‘«‘Edinburgh, 19th July, 1845. 
“Dear Sir, —I have examined the structure of the fossil woor 
which you found in the Old Red Sandstone at Cromarty, and have 
no hesitation in stating, that the reticulated texture of the trans- 
verse sections, though somewhat compressed, clearly indicates a 
coniferous origin; but as there is not the slightest trace of a disc 
to be seen in the longitudiral sections parallel to the medullary 
rays, it is impossible to say whether it belongs to the Pine or Arau- 

earian division. Iam, &c., 
«Wittram NIcoL.” 


It will be seen that Mr. Nicol failed to detect what I now deem 
the discs ot this conifer, — those stippled markings to which I have 
referretu, a:.d which the engraver has indicated in no exaggerated 
style, in one of the longitudinal sections (6) of the wood-cut given 
above. But even were this portion of the evidence wholly want- 
ing, we would be left in doubt, in consequence, not whether the 
Old Red lignite formed part of a true gymnospermous tree, but 
whetner that tree is now represented by the pines of Europe and 
America, or by the araucarians of Chili and New Zealand. Were 
I to risk an opinion in a department not particularly my prevince 
it would be in favor of an araucarian relationship. 


ANCIENT CONIFER. 223 


And, further, it might be very safely inferred from it, that if 
olive trees had survived, other trees and plants must have 
survived also; and that the dark muddy prominences round 
which the ebbing currents were fast sweeping to lower levels, 
would soon present, as in antediluvian times, their coverings of 
cheerful green. The olive leaf spoke not of merely a partial, 
but of a general vegetation. Now, the coniferous lignite of 
the Lower Old Red Sandstone we find charged, like the olive 
leaf, with a various and singularly interesting evidence. It is 
something to know, that in the times of the Coccosteus and 
Asterolepis there existed dry 1and, and that that land wore, as 
at after periods, its soft, gay mantle of green. It is some- 
thing also to know, that the verdant tint was not owing to a 
profuse development of the mere immaturities of the vege- 
table kingdom, — crisp, slow-growing lichens, or watery spore 
propagated fungi that shoot up to their full size in a night, — 
nor even to an abundance of the more highly organized fam- 
ilies of the liverworts and the mosses. These may have 
abounded then, as now; though we have not a shadow of 
evidence that they did. But while we have no proof wha.: 
ever of their existence, we have conclusive proof that there 
existed orders and families of a rank far above them. On 
the dry land of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, on which, 
according to the theory of Adolphe Brogniart, nothing higher 
than a lichen or a moss could have been expected, the ship- 
carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand, to explore 
the woods for some such stately pine as the one described by 
Milton —- 
“ Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great admiral.” 

Viewed simply ir its sucturesque aspect, this olive leaf of 

the Old Red seems not at all devoid of poetry. We sail 


226 ANCIENT CONIFER 


upwards into the high geologic zones, passing from ancient 
to still more ancient scenes of being and, as we voyage 
along, find ever in the surrounding prospect, as in the existing 
scene from which we set out, a graceful intermixture of land 
and water continent, river, and sea. We first coast along 
the land of the Tertiary, inhabited by the strange quadrupeds 
of Cuvier, and waving with the reeds and palms of the Paris 
Basin; the land of the Wealden, with its gigantic iguanodon 
rustling amid its tree ferns and its cycadez, comes next; 
then comes the green land of the Oolite, with its little pouched 
insectivorous quadruped, its flying reptiles, its vast jungles of 
the Brora equisetum, and its forests of the Helmsdale pine ; 
and then, dimly as through a haze, we mark, as we speed on, 
the thinly scattered islands of the New Red Sandstone, and 
pick up in our course a large floating leaf, veined like that of 
a cabbage, which not a little puzzles the botanists of the ex 
pedition. And now we near the vast Carboniferous continent. 
and see aiong the undulating outline, between us and the sky 
the strange forms of a vegetation, compared with which that 
of every previously seen land seems stunted and poor. We 
speed day after day along endless forests, in which gigantic 
club-mosses wave in air a hundred feet over head, and skirt 
interminable marshes, in which thickets of reeds overtop the 
mast-head. And, where mighty rivers come rolling to the 
sea, we mark, through the long-retiring vistas which they open 
into the interior, the higher grounds of the country covered 
with coniferous trees, and see doddered trunks of vast size, 
like those of Granton and Craigleith, reclining under the banks 
in deep muddy reaches, with their decaying tops turned adown 
the current. At length the furthermost promontory of this 
long range of coast comes full in view: we near it, — we 
have come up abreast of it: we see the shells of the Mour 


led 


ANCIENT CONIFER. 227 


tain Limestone glittering white along its fur.her shore, ana 
the green depths under our keel lightened by the flush of 
innumerable zorals; and then, o.dding farewell to the land 
forever, — for so the geologists of but five years ago would 
have advised, — we launch into the unmeasured ocean of the 
Old Red, with its three consecutive zones of animal life. 
Not a single patch of land more do those geologic charts 
exhibit which we still regard as new. ‘The zones of the 
Silurian and Cambrian succeed the zones of the Old Red; 
and, darkly fringed by an obscure bank of cloud ranged 
along the last zone in the series, a night that never dissipates 
settles down upon the deep. Our voyage, like that of the old 
fabulous navigators of five centuries ago, terminates on the 
sea in a thick darkness, beyond which there lies no shore and 
there dawns no light. And it is in the middle of this vast 
ocean, just where the last zone of the Old Red leans against 
the first zone of the Silurian, that we have succeeded in dis- 
covering a solitary island unseen before, —a shrub-bearing 
land, much enveloped in fog, but with hills that at least look 
green in the distance. There are patches of floating sea- 
weed much comminuted by the surf all around it; and on 
one projecting headland we see clear through our glasses a 
cone-bearing tree. } 

This certainly is not the sort of arrangement demanded 
by the exigencies of the development hypothesis. A true 
wood at the base of the Old Red Sandstone, or a true Placoid 
in the Limestones of Bala, very considerably beneath the base 
of the Lower Silurian system, are untoward misplacements 
for the purposes of the Lamarckian; and who that has 
watched the pregress of discovery for tne last twenty years, 
and seen the place of the earliest ichthyolite transferred from 
the Carboniferous to the Cambrian system, and that of the 


928 ANCIENT CONIFER. 


earliest exogenous lignite from the Lias to tne Lower De 
vonian, will now venture to say that fossil wood may not 
yet be detected as low in the scale as any vegetable organism 
whatever, or fossil fish as low as the remains of any animal ? 
But though the response of the earlier geolugic systems be 
thus unfavorable to the development hypothesis, may not 
men such as the author of the ‘ Vestiges” urge, that the 
geologic evidence, taken as a whole, and in its bearing on 
groupes and periods, establishes the general fact that the 
lower plants and animals preceded the higher, — that the 
conifera, for instance, preceded our true forest trees, such as 
the oak and elm,— that, in like manner, the fish preceded 
the reptile, that the reptile preceded the bird, that the bird 
preceded the mammiferous quadruped and the quadrumana, 
and that the mammiferous quadruped and the quadrumana 
preceded man? Assuredly yes! They may and do urge 
that Geology furnishes evidence of such a succession of ex- 
istences; and the arrangement seems at once a very won- 
derful and very beautiful one. Of that great and imposing 
procession of being of which this world has been the scene, 
the programme has been admirably marshalled. But the 
order of the arrangement in no degree justifies the inference 
based upon it by the Lamarckian. The fact that fishes ana 
reptiles were created on an earlier day than the beasts of the 
field and the human family, gives no ground whatever for 
the belief that “the peopling of the earth was one of a 
natural kind, requiring time,” or that the reptiles and fishes 
have been not only the predecessors, but also the progenitors 
of the beasts and of man. The geological phenomena, 
even had the author of the ‘ Vestiges” been consulted 
in their arrangement, and permitted to determine their se- 
quence, would yet have failed to furnish, not merely an 


ANCIENT CONIFER. 229 


adequate foundation for the development hypothesis, but even 

the slightest presumption in its favor. In making good the 

assertion, may I ask the reader to follow me through the 

details of a simple though somewhat lengthened illustration ? 
20 * 


2au SUPERPOSIT OK 


SUPERVOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF LIF&. 





SEvera. thousand years ago, ere the upheaval of the last 
of our raised beaches, there existed somewhere on the British 
coast a submarine bed, rich in sea-weed and the less destruc- 
tible zoophytes, and inhabited by the commoner crustacez 
and molluscs. Shoals of herrings frequented it every autumn, 
haunted by their usual enemies the dog-fish, the cod, and the 
porpoise ; and, during the other seasons of the year, it was 
swum over by the ling, the hake, and the turbot. A con- 
siderable stream, that traversed a wide extent of marshy 
country, waving with flags and reeds, and in which the frog 
and the newt bred by millions, entered the sea a few hun- 
dred yards away, and bore down, when in flood, its modicam 
of reptilian remains, some of which, sinking over the sub- 
marine bed, found a lodgment at the bottom. Portions of 
reeds and flags were also occasionally entombed, with now 
and then boughs of the pine and juniper, swept from the 
higher grounds. Through frequent depositions of earthy 
matter brought down by the streamlet, and of sand thrown 
up by tke sea, a gradual elevation of the bottom went on, 
till at length the deep-sea bed came to exist as a shallow 
bank, over which birds of the wader family stalked mid-leg 


NOT PARENTAL RELATION. 231 


aeep when plying for food; and on one occasion a small por 
poise, losing his way, and getting entangled amid its shoals 
perished on it, and left his carcass to be covered up by its 
mud and silt. That elevation of the land, or recession of the 
sea, to which the country owes its last acquired marginal strip 
of soil, took place, and the shallow bank became a flat 
meadow, raised some six or eight feet above the sea-level. 
Herbs, shrubs, and trees, in course of time covered it over; 
and then, as century succeeded century, it gathered atop a 
thick stratum of peaty mould, embedding portions of birch 
and hazel bushes, and a few doddered oaks. When in this 
state, at a comparatively recent period, an Italian boy, ac- 
companied by his monkey, was passing over it, when the poor 
monkey, hard-wrought and ill-fed, and withal but indiffer- 
ently suited originally for braving the rigors of a keen iorth- 
ern climate, lay down and died, and his sorrowing master 
covered up the remains. Not many years after, the mutilated 
corpse of a poor shipwrecked sailor was thrown up, during a 
night-storm, on the neighboring beach: it was a mere frag- 
ment of the human frame, — a mouldering unsightly mass, de- 
composing in the sun ; and a humane herd-boy, scooping out a 
shallow grave for it, immediately over that of the monkey, 
buried it up. Last of all, a farmer, bent on agricultural im- 
provement, furrowed the flat meadow to the depth of some 
six or eight feet, by a broad ditch, that laid open its organic 
contents from top to bottom. And then a philosopher of the 
school of Maillet and Lamarck, chancing to come that way, 
stepped aside to examine the phenomena, and square them 
with his theory. 

First, along the bottom of the deep ditch he detects marine 
organisms of a low order, and generally of a small size 


232 SUPERPOSITION 


There are dark indistinct markings traversing the gfsy silt, 
which he correctly enough regards as the remains of fucoids 

and blent with these, he finds the stony cells of flustra, the 
calcareous spindles of the sea-pen, the spines of echinus, 
and the thin granular plates of the crustacea. Layers of mus: 
sel and pecten shells come next, mixed up with the shells of 
buccinum, natica, and trochus. Over the shells there occur 
defensive spines of the dog-fish, blent with the button-like, 
thornset boucles of the ray. And the minute ske’etons of her- 
rings, with the vertebral and cerebral bones of coa, rest over 
these in turn. He finds, also, well-preserved bits of reed, and 
a fragment of pine. Higher up, the well-marked bones of 
the frog occur, and the minute skeleton of a newt; higher 
still, the bones of birds of the diver family ; higher still, the 
skeleton of a porpoise ; and still higher, he discovers that of a 
monkey, resting amid the decayed boles and branches of dicot- 
yledonous plants and trees. He pursues his search, vastly 
delighted to find his doctrine of progressive development so 
beautifully illustrated ; and last of all he detects, only a few 
inches from the surface, the broken remains of the poor sailor. 
And having thus collected his facts, he sets himself to collate 
them with his hypothesis. To hold. that the zoophytes had 
been created zoophytes, the molluscs molluscs, the fishes 
fishes, the reptiles reptiles, or the man a man, would be, ac- 
cording to our philosopher, alike derogatory to the Divine wis- 
dom and to the acumen and vigor of the human intellect: 
it would be “ distressing to him to be compelled to picture the 
power of God, as put forth in any other manner than in those 
slow, mysterious, universal laws, which have so plainly an 
eternity to work in;” nor, with so large an amount of evi- 
dence before him as that which the ditch rurnishes, —- evidence 


NOT PARENTAL RELATION. 233 


conclusive io the effect that creation is but development, — does 
he find it necessary either to cramp his faculties or outrage his 
taste, by a weak yielding to the requirements of any such belief. 
Meanwhile the farmer, — a plain, observant, elderly man, 
somes up, and he and the philosopher enter into conversa- 
tion. “I have been reading the history of creation in the 
side of your deep ditch,” says the philosopher, ‘ and find the 
record really very complete. Look there,” he adds, pointing 
to the unfossiliferous strip that runs along the bottom of the 
bank ‘there, life, both vegetable and animal, first began. 
It began, struck by electricity out of albumen, as a con- 
geries of minute globe-shaped atoms,—each a_ hollow 
sphere within a sphere, as in the well-known Chinese puz- 
zle ; and from these living atoms were all the higher forms 
progressively developed. The ditch, of course, exhibits none 
of the atoms with which being first commenced ; for the 
atoms don’t keep ; — we merely see their place indicated by 
that unfossiliferous band at the bottom; but we may detect 
immediately over it almost the first organisms into which — 
parting thus early into the two great branches of organic be- 
ing — they were developed. There are the fucoids, first-born 
among vegetables, — and there the zoopbytes, well nigh the 
lowest of the animal forms. The fucoids are marine plants 
for, according to Oken, ‘ all life is from the sea, — none from 
the continent ;’ but there, a few feet higher, we may see the 
remains of reeds and flags, — semi-aqueous, semi-aerial plants 
of the comparatively low monocotyledonous order into whict 
the fucoids were developed ; higher still we detect fragments 
of pines, and, I think, juniper, — trees and shrubs of the land 
of an intermediate order, into which the reeds and flags were 
developed in turn; and in that peaty layer immediately be- 


neath the vegetable mould, there occur boughs and trunks 
20* 


934 SUPERPOSITION 


of blacxenea oak,—a noble tree of the dicotyledonow 
division, — the highest to which vegetation in its upward course 
has yet attained. Nor is the progress of the other great branch 
of organized being —that of the animal kingdom — less dis 
tinctly traceable. The zoophytes became crustacea and mol- 
luscs, — the crustacea and molluscs, dog-fishes and herrings, 
—the dog-fish, a low placoid, shot up chiefly into turbot, cod 
and ling ; but the smaller osseous fish was gradually convert- 
ed into a batrachian reptile ; in short, the herring became a 
frog, — an animal that still testifies to its ichthyological 
origin, by commencing life as a fish. Gradually, in the 
course of years, the reptile, expanding in size and improving 
in faculty, passed into a warm-blooded porpoise ; the porpoise 
at length, tiring of the water as he began to know better, 
quitted it altogether, and became a monkey, and the monkey 
by slow degrees improved into man, — yes, into man, my 
friend, who has still a tendency, especially when just shooting 
up to his full stature, and studying the ‘ Vestiges,’ to resume 
the monkey. Such, Sir, is the true history of creation, as 
clearly recorded in the section of earth, moss, and silt, which 
you have so opportunely laid bare. Where that ditch now 
opens, the generations of the man atop lived, died, and were 
developed. There flourished and decayed his great-great- 
great-great-grandfather the sea-pen, — his great-great-great- 
grandfather the mussel, — his great-great-grandfather the her- 
ring, — his great-grandfather the frog, —his grandfather the 
porpoise, — and his father the monkey. And there also lived, 
died, and were developed, the generations of the oak, from the 
kelp-weed and tangle to the reed and the flag, and from the 
reed and the flag, to the pine, the juniper, the hazel, and the 
birch.” 


‘ Master,” replies the farmer, “ I see you are a scholar 


VOT PARENTAL RELATION. £35 


and, I suspect, a wag. It would take a great dea of believ. 
ing to believe a'l that. In the days of my poor old neigh 
bor the infidel weave1, who died of delirium tremens thirty 
years ayo, I used to read Tom Paine; and, as I was a little 
wild at the time, I was,I am afraid, a bit of a sceptic. It 
wasn’t easy work always to be as unbelieving as Tom, espe- 
cially when the conscience within got queasy; but it would 
be a vast deal easier, Master, to doubt with Tom than to 
believe with you. I am a plain man, but not quite a fool ; 
and as I have now been looking about me in this neigh- 
borhood for the last forty years, I have come to know 
that it gives no assurance that any one thing grew out of 
any other thing because it chances to be found atop of it, 
Master. See, yonder is Dobbin lying lazily atop of his 
bundle of hay; and yonder little Jack, with bridle in hand, 
and he in a few minutes will be atop of Dobbin. And all I 
see in that ditch, Master, from top to bottom, is neither more 
nor less than a certain top-upon-bottom order of things. I see 
sets of bones and dead plants lying on the top of other sets 
of bones and dead plants, — things lying atop of things, as | 
say, like Dobbin on the hay and Jack upon Dobbin. I 
doubt not the sea was once here, Master, just as it was once 
where you see the low-lying field yonder, which I won from 
it ten years ago. I have carted tangle and kelp-weed where 
[ now cut clover and rye-grass, and have gathered periwinkles 
where I now see snails. But it is clean against experience, as 
my poor old :ighbor the weaver used to say, — against my 
experience, Master, —that it was the kelp-weed that became 
the rye-grass, or that the periwinkles freshened into snails. 
Ihe kelp-weed and periwinkles belong to those plants and 
animals of the sea that we find growing in only the sea; the 
rye grass and snails to those plants and animals of the land 


236 SUPERPOSITION 


that we fin] yrowing on only the land. 4t is contrary to ali 
experience, and all testimony too, that the one passed inte 
the other, and so I cannot believe it; but I do and must be 
lieve, instead, — for it is not contrary to experience, and much 
according to testimony, — that the Author of all created both 
land productions and sea productions at the ‘ times before ap- 
pointed, and ‘determined the bounds of their habitation.’ 
‘ By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the 
word of God;’? and I find I can be a believer on God’s 
terms at a much less expense of credulity than an infidel on 
yours.” 

But in this form at least it can be scarce necessary that the 
argument should be prolonged. 

The geological phenomena, I repeat, even had the author 
of the “‘ Vestiges” been consulted in their arrangement, and 
permitted to determine their sequence, would fail to furnish 
a single presumption in favor of the development hypothe- 
sis. Does the ditch-side of my illustration furnish it with a 
single favoring presumption? ‘The arrangement and se- 
quence of the various organisms are complete in both the 
zoological and phytological branch. The flag and reed succeed 
the fucoid; the firand juniper succeed the flag and reed; and 
the hazel, birch, and oak succeed the fir and juniper. In like 
manner, and with equal regularity, zoophytes, the radiata, the 
articulata, mollusca, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, are 
ranged, the superior in succession over the inferior classes, in 
the true ascenling order; and yet we at once see that the 
evidence of tha ditch-side, amounting in the aggregate to no 
more than this, tha the remains of the higher lie over those 
of tne lower organisms, gives not a shadow of support to the 
hypothesis that the lower produced the higher. For, accord- 
mg to the honest farmer, the fact that any one thing is 


NOT PARENTAL RELATION. 237 


found lying on the top of any other thing, furnishes no pre- 
sumption whatever that the thing below stands in the rela: 
tion of parent to the thing above. And the evidence which 
the well-ranged organisms of the ditch-side do not furnish, 
the organisms of the entire teologic scale, even were they 
equally well ranged, would fail to supply. ‘The fossiliferous 
portion of the ditch-side of my illu:tiation may be, let us sup- 
pose, some five or six feet in thickness; the fossiliferous 
portion of the earth’s crust must be some five or six miles in 
thickness. But the mere circumstance of space introduces no 
new element into the question. Equally in both cases the 
fact of superposition is not identical with the fact of parental 
relation, nor even in any degree an analogous fact. 

As, however, the succession of remains in the fossiliferous 
series of rocks is infinitely less favorable to the develop- 
ment hypothesis than that of the organisms of the ditch-side, 
it is not very surprising that the disciples of the development 
school should be now evincing a disposition to escape from 
the ascertained facts of Geology, and the legitimate conclu- 
sions based upon these, unto unknown and unexplored prov- 
inces of the science; or that they should be found virtually 
urging, that though some of the ascertained facts may seem 
to bear against them, the facts not yet ascertained may be 
found telling in their favor. Such, in effect, is the course 
taken by the author of the “ Vestiges,” in his “ Explanations,” 
when, availing himself of a difference of opinion which ex- 
ists among some of our most accomplished geologists regard- 
ing the first epochs of organized existence, he takes part 
with the section who hold that we have not yet penetrated 
to the deposits representative of the dawn of being, and that 
fossil-charged formations may yet be detected beneath tha 
oldest rocks of what is now regarded as the lowest fossilifer- 


238 THE BEGINNINGS 


ous system. Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Leonard Horner 
represent the abler and better-known assertors of this last 
view; while Sic Roderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick 
rank among -he more distinguished assertors of the antago- 
nist one. It would be of course utterly presumptuous in 
the writer of these pages to attempt deciding a question 
regarding which such men differ; but in forming a judg- 
ment for myself, various considerations incline me to hold, 
that the point is now very nearly determined at which, 
to employ the language of Sir Roderick, “ life was first 
breathed into the waters.” ‘The pyramid of organized ex- 
istence, as it ascends in the by-past eternity, inclines sen- 
sibly towards its apex, —that apex of “ beginning” in which, 
on far other than geological grounds, it is our privilege to 
believe. The broad base of the superstructure, planted on 
the existing now, stretches across the entire scale of life, 
animal and vegetable; but it contracts as it rises into the 
past : — man — the quadrumana — the quadrupedal mammal 
—the bird — and the reptile-—are each in succession struck 
from off its breadth, till we at length see it with the ver- 
tebrata, represented by only the fish, narrowing, as it were, 
to a point; and though the clouds of the upper region may 
hide its extreme apex, we infer from the declination of its 
sides, that it cannot penetrate much farther into the pro- 
found. When Steele and Addison were engaged in break: 
ing up, piecemeal, their Spectator Club, — killing off good 
Sir Roger de Coverly with a defluction, marrying will 
Honeycomb to his tenant’s daughter, and sending away 
Captain Sentry and Sir Andrew Freeport to their estates 
in the country, — it was shrewdly inferred that the “ Spec- 
tator’” himself was very soon to quit the field, and the 
sudden discontinuance of his lucubrations justifiod the in- 


OF LIFE 239 


ference. And a corresponding style of reasoning, based 
on the corresponding fact of the breaking up and piece- 
meal disappearance of the group of organized being, seems 
equally admissible. It is somewhat difficult ‘o conceive how 
at least many more volumes of the geolcgic -ecord than the 
known ones could be got up without the club. Further, — so far 
as yet appears, the fish must have lived in advance of the rep- 
tile during the three protracted periods of the Old Red 
Sandstone, the two still more protracted periods of the Up- 
per and Lower Silurians, and the perhaps more protracted 
period still of the Cambrian deposits ;— in all, apparently, a 
greatly more extended space than that in which the rep- 
tile lived in advance of the quadrupedal mammal, or the 
quadrupedal mammal lived in advance of man.. On prin- 
ciples somewhat similar to those on which, with reference to 
the average term of life, the genealogist fixes the probable 
period of some birth in his chain of succession of which he 
cannot determine the exact date, it seems natural to infer 
that the dirth of the fish should have taken place at least not 
earlier than the times of the Cambrian system. 

There is another consideration, of at least equal, if not greater 
weight. A general correspondence is found to obtain in wide- 
ly-separated localities, in the organic contents of that lowest 
band of the Lower Silurian or Cambrian system in which fossils 
have heen detected. In Russia, in Sweden, in Norway, in the 
Lake district of England, and in the United States, there are 
certain rocks which occupy relatively the same place, and en- 
close what may be described generally as the same remains. 
They occur in Scandinavia as that “ fucoidal band ” of Sir Ro- 
derick Murchison which forms the base of the vast Paleozoic 
basin of the Baltic ; they exist in Cumberland and Westmore- 
‘and as the Skiddaw slates of Professcr Sedgwick, and beas 


240 THE BEGINNINGS 


also their fucoidal impressions, blent with graptolites ; they 
are present in Norta America as those Potsdam sandstones of 
the States’ geologists in which fucoids so abound, mixed with: 
a minute lingula, that they impart to some portions of the 
strata a carboniferous character. But with these deep-lying 
beds in all the several localities, thousands of miles apart, ir 
which their passage into the inferior deposits has been traced, 
fossils cease. And why cease with them? In one locality 
the ancient ocean may have been of such a depth in the 
period immediately previous, and represented, in consequence, 
by the strata immediately beneath, that no animal could have 
lived at its bottom,—though I do not well see why the re- 
mains of those animals who, like the shark and pilot-fish, are 
frequently seen swimming over the profoundest depths, might 
not, did such exist at the time, be notwithstanding found at its 
bottom; or in another locality every trace of organization in 
the nether rocks may have been obliterated, at some posterior 
period, by fire. But it is difficult to imagine that that uniform 
cessation of organized life at one point, which seems to have 
conducted Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick to 
their conclusion, should have been thus a mere effect of ac- 
cident. Accident has its laws, but uniformity is not one of 
them ; and should the experience be invariable, as it already 
seems extensive, that immediately beneath the fucoidal beds 
organic remains cease, I do not see how the conclusion is to 
be avoided, that they represent the period in which at least 
existences capable of preservation were first introduced. Every 
case of coincident cessation which has occurred since the 
determination of the second case, must be reckoned, not 
simply as an additional unit in evidence, but, on the prin 
ciples which determine mathematical probability, as a unit 
multiplied frst by the chances against its occurrence, re- 


OF LIFE. 24 


garded as a mere contingency in tha: exact forr.ation, and 
second, by the sum of all the previous occurrences at the 
same point. 

In this curious question, however, which it must be the part 
of future explorers in the geological field definitely to settle 
the Lamarckian can have no legitimate stake. It is but na- 
tural that, in his anxiety to secure an ultimate retreat for his 
hypothesis, he should desire to see that darkness in which 
ghosts love to walk settling down on the extreme verge of the 
geological horizon, and enveloping in its folds the first begin- 
nings of life. But even did the cloud exist, it is, if 1] 
may so express myself, on its nearer side, where there is light, 
—— not within nor beyond it, where there is none,— that the 
battle must be fought. It is to Geology as it is known to be, 
that the Lamarckian has appealed, — not to Geology as it is 
not known to be. He has summoned into court existing wit- 
nesses ; and, finding their testimony unfavorable, he seeks to 
neutralize their evidence by calling from the “ vasty deep,” 
of the unexamined and the obscure, witnesses that “ won't 
come,” — that by the legitimate authorities are not known 
even to exist, —and with which he himself is, on his own 
confession, wholly unacquainted, save in the old scholastic 
character of mere possibilities. The possidle fossil can have 
no more standing in this controversy than the ‘ possible angel.” 
He tells us that we have not yet got down to that base-line 
of all the fossiliferous systems at which life first began ; and 
very possibly we have not. But what of thai? He has 
carried his appeal to Geology as it is; —he has referred his 
case to the testimony of the known witnesses, for in no case 
can the unknown ones be summoned or produced. It is on 
the evidence of the known, and the known only, that the 
exact value of his claims must be determined; and _ his 


21 


242 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 


appeal to the unknown serves but to show how thoroughly ne 
himself feels that the actually ascertained evidence bears 
against him. The severe censure of Johnson on reasoners of 
this class is in no degree over-severe. ‘+ He who will deter- 
mine,” said the moralist, “‘ against that which he knows, be- 
cause there may be something which he knows not, — he that 
can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged cer- 
tamty, — is not to be admitted among reasonable beings.” 

But the honest farmer’s reminiscences of his deceased 
neighbor the weaver, and his use at second-hand of Hume’s 
experience-argument, naturally lead me to another vranch of 
‘the subject. 


LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS. 24.3 


LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS 


ITS CONSEQUENCES. 


I wave said that the curiously-mixed, semi-marine, semi 
lacustrine flora of the Lake of Stennis became associated 
in my mind, like the ancient Asterolepis of Stromness, with 
the development hypothesis. The fossil, as has been shown 
represents not inadequately the geologic evidence in the 
question, — the mixed vegetation of the lake may be regarded 
as forming a portion of the phytological evidence. 

“ All life,” says Oken, “is from the sea. Where the sea 
organism, by self-elevation, succeeds in attaining into form, 
there issues forth from it a higher organism. Love arose ou 
of the sea-foam. The primary mucus (that in which clec- 
tricity originates life) was, and is still, generated in those very 
parts of the sea where the water is in contact with earth and 
air, and thus upon the shores. The first creation of the or- 
ganic took place where the first mountain summits projected 
out of the water, — indeed, without doubt, in India, if the 
Himalaya be the highest mountain. The first organic forms, 
whether plants or animals, emerged from the shallow parts of 
the sea.” Maillet wrote to exactly the same effect a full century 
ago. ‘*In a werd,” we find him saying, in his “* Telliamed ™ 


244 LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS 


“do not herbs, plants, roots, grains, and all of this kind that 
the earth produces and n».rishes, come from the sea? Is it 
not at least natural to think so, since we are certain that all 
our habitable lands came originally from the sea? Besides, 
in small islands far from the contirent, which have appearea 
put a few ages ago at most, and where it ‘s manifest that 
never any man had been, we find shrubs, herbs, roots, and 
sometimes animals. Now, you must be forced to own either 
that these productions owed their origin to the sea, or to a 
new creation, which is absurd.” 

It is a curious fact, to which, in the passing, I must be 
permitted to call the attention of the reader, that all the 
.eading assertors of the development hypothesis have been 
bad geologists. Maillet had for his errors and deficiencies 
the excellent apology that he wrote more than a hundred 
years ago, when the theory of a universal ocean, promul- 

gated by Leibnitz nearly a century earlier, was quite as 
| good as any of the other theories of the time, and when 
Zeology, as a science, had no existence. And so we do 
not wonder at an ignorance which was simply that of his 
age, when we find him telling his readers that plants must 
have originated in the sea, seeing that “all our habitable 
lands came originally from the sea;” meaning, of course, 
by the statement, not at all what the modern geologist 
would mean were he to employ even the same words, but 
simply that there was a time when the universal ocean <0- 
vered the whole globe, and that, as the waters gradually di- 
minished, the lofiier mountain summits and higher table- 
jands, in appearing in their new character as islands and 
continents, derived their flora from what, in a universal 
ocean could be the only possible existing flora, —that of the 
sea But what shall we say of the equally profcund ignorance 


OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 245 


manifested by Professor Oken, a living authority, whom we 
find prefacing for the Ray Society, in 1847, the English 
translation of his “ Elements of Physio-philosophy ?” “The 
first creation of the organic took place,” we find him saying, 
“where the first mountain summits projected out of the 
sea, — indeed, without doubt, in India, if the Himalaya be 
the highest mountain.” Here, evidently, in this late age of the 
world, nm which Geology does exist as a science, do we find 
the ghost of the universal ocean of Leibnitz walking once 
more, as if it had never been laid. Is there now in all Bri- 
tain even a tyro geologist so unacquainted with geological! 
fact as not to know that the richest flora which the globe 
ever saw bad existed for myriads of ages, and then, becoming 
extinct, had slept in the fossil state for myriads of ages 
more, ere the highest summits of the Himalayan range rose 
over the surface of the deep? The Himalayas disturbed, and 
bore up along with them in their upheaval, vast beds of the 
Oolitic system. Belemnites and ammonites have been dug 
out of their sides along the line of perpetual snow, seventeen 
thousand feet over the level of the sea. What in the recent 
period form the loftiest mountains of the globe, existed as 
porions of a deep-sea bottom, swum over by the fishes 
and reptiles of the great Secondary period, when what is 
now Scotland had its dark forests of stately pine, — repre- 
sented in the present age of the world by the lignites of Helms- 
dale, Kathie, and Eigg,—and when the plants of a former 
creation lay dead and buried deep beneath, in shales and fire- 
clay, — existing as vast beds of coal, or entombed in solid 
rock, as the brown massy trunks of Granton and Craigleith. 
And even ere these last existed as living trees, the conifer 
ous lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone found at Cro 
marty had passed into the fossil state, and lay as a semi 


21* 


4b LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS 


calcareous, semi-bituminous mass, amid perished Dipterians 
and extinct Coccostei. So much for the Geology of the Ger- 
man Professor. And be it remarked, that the actualities in 
this question can be determined by only the geologist. The 
mere naturalist may indicate from the analogies of his science, 
what possibly might have taken place but what really did 
take place, and the true order in which the events occurred, 
it is the part of the geologist to determine. It cannot be out 
of place to remark, further that geological discovery is in no 
degree responsible for the infidelity of the development 
hypothesis; seeing that, in the first place, the hypothesis 
is greatly more ancient than the discoveries, and, in the second, 
that its more prominent assertors are exactly the men who 
know least of geological fact. But to this special point I 
shall again refer. 

The author of the ‘ Vestiges ” is at one, regarding the sup- 
posed marine origin of terrestrial plants, with Maillet and 
Oken; and he regards the theory, we find him stating in his 
“« Explanations,” as the true key to the well-established fact, 
that the vegetation of groupes of islands generally corre- 
sponds with that of the larger masses of land in their neigh- 
borhood. Marine plants of the same kinds crept out of the 
sea, it would seem, upon the islands on the one hand, and 
upon the larger masses of land on the other, and thus pro- 
duced the same flora in each; just as tadpoles, after passing 
their transition state, creep out of their canal or river on the 
opposite banks, and thus give to the fields or meadows on the 
right-hand side a supply of frogs, of the same appearance 
and size as those poured out upon the fields and meadows of 
the left. ‘Thus, for example,” we find him saying, ‘ the 
Galapagos exhibit general characters in common with South 
America ; and the Cape de Verd islands, with Africa. They 


OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 247 


are, in Mr. Darwin’s 1appy phrase, satellites to those continents, 
m respect of natura: history. Again,” he continues, ‘ when 
masses of land are only divided from each other by narrow 
seas, there is usually a community of forms. The European 
and African shores of the Mediterranean present an example. 
Our own islands afford another of far higher value. It appears 
that the flora of Ireland and Great Britain is various, or 
rather that we have five floras or distinct sets of plants, and 
that each of these is partaken of by a portion of the opposite 
continent. There are, first, a flora confined to the west of 
[reland, and imparted likewise to the north-west of Spain ; 
second, a flora in the south-west promontory of England and 
of Ireland, extending across the Channel to the north-west 
coast of France ; third, one common to the south-east of Eng- 
land and north of France ; fourth,an Alpine flora developed 
n the Scottish and Welsh Highlands, and intimately related 
to that of the Norwegian Alps; fifth, a flora which prevails 
over a large part of England and Ireland, ‘ mingled with 
other floras, and diminishing slightly as we proceed west- 
ward :” this bears intimate relation with the flora of Ger- 
many. Facts so remarkable would force the meanest fact- 
collector or species-demonstrator into generalization. The 
really ingenious man who lately brought them under notice 
(Professor Edward Forbes) could only surmise, as their ex- 
planation, that the spaces now occupied by the intermediate 
seas must have been dry land at the time when these floras 
were created. In that case, either the original arrangement 
of the floras, or the selection of land for submergence , must 
have been apposite to the case in a degree far from usual. 
The necessity for a simpler cause is obvious, and it is found in 
the hypothesis of a spread of terrestrial vegetation from the sea 
into the lands adjacen‘. The community of forms in the vari 


248 uLAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS 


ous regicsis opposed to each other merely indicates a distinc, 
marine creation in each of the oceanic areas respectively 
interposed, and which would naturally advance into the lands 
nearest to it, as far as circumstances of soil and climate were 
found agreeable.” 

Such, regarding the origin of terrestrial vegetation, are the 
views of Maillet, Oken, and the author of the “ Vestiges.” 
‘They all agree in holding that the plants of the land existed 
in their first condition as weeds of the sea. 

let me request the reader at this stage, ere we pass on to 
the consideration of the experience-argument, to remark a 
few incidental, but by no means unimportant, consequences 
of the belief. And, first, let him weigh for a moment the 
comparative demands on his credulity of the theory by which 
Professor Forbes accounts for the various floras of <he Brit- 
ish Islands, and that hypothesis of transmutation which 
the author of the ‘¢ Vestiges”’ would so fain put in its place, as 
greatly more simple, and, of course, more in accordance with 
hhe principles of human belief. In order to the reception of 
che Professor’s theory, it is necessary to hold, in the first place, 
that the creation of each species of plant took place, not by 
repetition of production in various widely-separated cen- 
tres, but in some single centre, from which the species prop- 
agated itself by seed, bud, or scion, across the special area 
which it is now found to occupy. And this, in the first in- 
stance, is of course as much an assumption as any of those 
assumed numbers or assumed lines with which, in algebra 
and the mathematics, it is necessary in so many calculations 
to set out, in quest of some required number or line, which 
without the assistance of the assumed ones, we might de- 
spair of ever finding. But the assumption is in itself neither 
winatural nor violent; there are various very remarkable anal- 


OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 249 


ogies which lend it support; the facts which seen: least to 
harmonize with it are not wholly irreconcilable, and are, 
besides, of a merely exceptional character; and, further, it 
has been adopted by botanists of the highest standing.* [1 





* The following digest from Professor Balfour’s very admi- 
rable “Manual of Botany,” of what is held on this curious sub- 
ject, may be not unacceptable to the reader. ‘It is an interesting 
question to determine the mode in which the various species and 
tribes of plants were originally scattered over the globe. Vari- 
ous hypotheses have been advanced on the subject. Linneus en- 
tertained the opinion that there was at first only one primitive 
centre of vegetation, from which plants were distributed over the 
globe. Some, avoiding all discussions and difficulties, suppose that 
plants were produced at first in the localities where they are now 
seen vegetating. Others think that each species of plant originated 
in, and was diffused from, a single primitive centre; and that there 
were numerous such centres situated in different parts of the world, 
each centre being the seat of a particular number of species. They 
thus admit great vegetable migrations, similar to those of the human 
races. Those who adopt the latter view recognize in the distripu- 
tion of plants some of the last revolutions of our planet, and the 
- action of numerous and varied forces, which impede or favor the 
dissemination of vegetables in the present day. ‘hey endeavor to 
ascertain the primitive flora of countries, and to trace the vegetable 
migrations which have taken place. Daubeny says, that analogy 
favors the supposition that each species of plant was originally 
formed in some particular locality, whence it spread itself gradu 
ally over a certain area, rather than that the earth was at once, 
by the fiat of the Almighty, covered with vegetation in the manner 
we at present behold it. The human race rose from a single pair; 
and the distribution of plants and animals over a certain definite 
area would seem to imply that the same was the general law. Anal- 
ogy would lead us to believe that the extension of species over the 
earth originally took place on the same plan on which it is con- 
ducted at present, when a new island starts up in the midst of 
the ocear, produced either by a coral reef or avolcano. In these 
gases the whole surface is not at once overspread with plants, but 
a gradual progress of vegetation is traced fron the accidental intro- 


250 CONSEQUENCES 


‘s necessary td hold, in the second place, in order to the re 
ception of the theory, that the area of the earth’s surface 
occupied by the British Islands and the neighboring coasts 
of the Continent once sicod fifty fathoms higher, in relation 
to the existing sea-level, than it does now, —a belief which, 
whatever its specific grounds or standing in this particular 
case, is at least in strict accordance with the general geologi- 
cal phenomena of subsidence and elevation, and which, so far 
from outraging any experience founded on observation or 
testimony, runs in the same track with what is known of 
wide areas now in the course of sinking, like that on the 
Italian coast, in which the Bay of Baie and the ruins of the 
temple of Serapis occur, or that in Asia, which includes the 
Run of Cutch; or of what is known of areas in the course of 
rising, like part of the coast of Sweden, or part of the coast 
of South America, or in Asia along the western shores of 
Aracan. Whereas, in- order to close with the simpler an- 


> it is neces- 


‘agonistic belief of the author of the “ Vestiges,’ 
sary to hold, contrary to all experience, that dulce and hen- 
ware * became, through a very wonderful metamorphosis, 
cabbage and spinnage ; that kelp-weed and tangle bour- 
geoned into oaks and willows ; and that slack, rope-weed, and 
green-raw,t shot up into mangel-wurzel, rye-grass, and clover. 
Simple, certainly! An infidel on terms such as these could 


with no propriety be ragarded as an unbeliever. It is well 


duction of a single seed, perhaps, of each species, wafted by winds 
or floated by currents. The remarkable limitation of certain species 
to single spots on the globe seems to favor the supposition of specific 
rentres.” 

* Rhodomenia palmata an? Alaria esculenta. 


+ Porphyra laciniata, Chorau filum, and Enteromorpha compressa 


OF THE LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS 25s 


that the New Testament makes no such extraordinary de- 
mands on human credulity. : 
Let us remark further, at this stage, that, judgirg from the 
generally received geological evidence in the case, very little 
time seems to be allowed by the author of the ‘‘ Vestiges ” 
“or that miraculous process of transmutation through whict 
the low algee of our sea-shores are neld to have passed intc 
high orders of plants wh’chn constitute the prevailing Britist 
flora. The boulder clay, which rises so high along our hills, ana 
which, as shown by its inferior position on the lower grounds, 
is decidedly the most ancient of the country’s superficial de- 
posits, is yet so modern, geologically, that it contains only 
recent shells. It belongs to that cold, glacial, post-Tertiary 
period, in which what is now Britain existed as a few 
groupes of insulated hill-tops, bearing the semi-arctic vegetation 
of our fourth flora,—that true Celtic flora of the country 
which we now find, like the country’s Celtic races of our 
own species, cooped up among the mountains. The fifth oz 
Germanic flora must have been introduced, it is held, at a 
later period, when the climate had greatly meliorated. And 
if we are to hold that the plants of this last flora were devet- 
oped from sea-weed, not propagated across a continuity of 
land from the original centre in Germany, or borne by cur. 
rents from the mouths of the Germanic rivers,— the theory 
of Mon. C. Martins, —then must we also hold that that de- 
velopment took place since the times of the boulder clay, and 
that fucoids and conferve became dicotyledonous and moro- 
cotyledonous plants during a brief period, in which the Pu. 
pura lapillus and Turritella terebra did not alter a single 
whorl, and the Cyprina tslandica and Astarte borealis re- 
vamed unchanged each minute projection of their hinges, and 
each nicer peculiarity of their muscula~ impressions — Crea- 


252 CONSEQUENCES 


tion would be greatly less wonderful than a sudden transmu 

tative process such as this, restricted in its operation to groupes 
of English, Irish, and Manx plau..s, identical with groupes in 
Germany, when all the various organisms around them, such 
as our sea-shells, continued to be exactly what they had been 
for ages before. A process of development from the lowest 
to the highest forms, rigidly restricted to the flora of a coun- 
try, would be simply the miracle of Jonah’s gourd several 
thousand times repeated. 

I must here indulge in a few remarks more, which, though 
they may seem of an incidental character, have a direct bear- 
ing on the general subject. The geologist infers, in all his 
reasonings founded on fossils, that a race or species has ex- 
isted from some one certain point in the scale to some other 
certain point, if he find it occurring at both points together. 
He infers on this principle, for instance, that the boulder clay, 
which contains only recent shells, belongs to the recent or 
post-Tertiary period; and that the Oolite and Lias, which 
contain no recent shells, represent a period whose existences 
have all become extinct. And all experience serves to show 
that his principle is a sound one. In creation there are many 
species linked together, from their degree of similarity, by 
the generic tie ; but no perfect verisimilitude obtains among 
them, unless hereditarily derived from the one, two, or more 
individuals, of contemporary origin, with which the race be- 
gan. ‘True, there are some races that have spread over very 
wide circles, — the circle of the human family has become 
identical with that of the globe ; and there are certain plants 
and arimals that, from peculiar powers of adaptation to the 
varieties of soil and climate, — mayhap also from the tena: 
cious vitality of their seeds, and their facilities of transport by 
natural means, —ar2 likewise diffused ~ery widely. There 


OF THE LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS. 253 


are plants. too, such as the common nettle and some of the 
ordinary grasses, which accompany civilized man all over the 
globe, he scarce knows how, and spring up unbidden where- 
ever he fixes his habitation. He, besides, carries with him 
the common agricultural weeds: there are localities in the 
United States, says Sir Charles Lyell, where these exotics out- 
number the native plants; but these are exceptions to the 
prevailing economy of distribution ; and the circles of species 
generally are comparatively limited and well defined. The 
mountains of the southern hemisphere have, like those of 
Switzerland and the Scotch Highlands, their forests of coniferous 
trees ; but they furnish no Swiss pines or Scotch firs; nor do 
the coasts of New Zealand or Van Dieman’s Land supply 
the European shells or fish. True, there may be much to 
puzzle in the identity of what may be termed the exceptional 
plants, equally indigenous, apparently, in circles widely sep- 
arated by space. It has been estimated that there exist 
about a hundred thousand vegetable species, and of these, 
thirty Antarctic forms have been recognized by Dr. Hooker 
as identical with European ones. Had Robinson Crusoe failed 
to remember that he had shaken the old corn-bag where he 
found the wheat and barley ears springing up on his island, 
he might have held that he had discovered a new centre of 
the European cerealia. And the process analogous to the 
shaking of the bag is frequently a process not to be remem- 
bered. There are several minute lochans in the Hebrides 
and the west of Ireland in which there occurs a small plant 
of the cord-rush family, (Eriocaulon septangulare,) which, 
though common in America, is nowhere to be found on the 
European Continent. It is the only British plant which be- 
longs to no other part of Europe. How was tt transpc rted 
across the Atlantic? Entangled, mayhap, in the form of a 
22 


254 CONSEQUENCES 


single seed, — for its seeds are exceedingly light and small 
—in the plumage of some water-fowl, free of both sea and 
lake, rt had been carried in the germ from the weed-skirted 
edge of some American swamp or mere, to some mossy 
lochan of Connaught or of Skye; and one such seed trans- 
ported by one such accident, unique in its occurrence in 
thousands of years, would be quite sufficient to puzzle all the 
botanists forever after. I have seen the seed of one of our 
Scotch grasses, that had been originally caught in the matted 
fleece of a sheep reared among the hills of Sutherland, and 
then wrought into a coarse, ill-dressed woollen cloth, carried 
about for months in a piece of underclothing. It might have 
gone over half the globe in that time, and, when cast away 
with the worn vestment, might have originated a new circle 
for its species in South America or New Holland. There are 
seeds specially contrived by the Great Designer to be carried 
far from their original habitats in the coats of animals, —a 
mode which admits of transport to much greater distances 
than the mode, also extensively operative, of consigning 
them for conveyance to their stomachs; and when we see 
the work in its effects, we are puzzled by the want of a 
record of an emigratory process, of which, in the circum- 
stances, no record could possibly exist. Unable to make out 
a case for the “shaking of the bag,” we bethink us, in the 
emergency, of repetition of creation. But in circles separat- - 
ed by time, not space, — by time, across whose dim gulfs no 
voyager sails, and no bird flies, and over which there are no 
means of transport from the point where a race once fails, 
to any other point in the future, — we find no repe“ttion of 
species If the production of per‘ect duplicates or tripli- 
eates in independent centres were a law of nature, our works 
of physical science could scarce fail to tell us of identical 


OF THE LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS. 255 


species found occurring in widely-separated systems, — Scotch 
firs and larches, for instance, among the lignites of the Lias. 
or Cyprina islandica and Ostrea edulis among the shells of 
the Mountain Limestone. But never yet has the geologist 
fyund in his systems or formations any such evidence as facts 
sucl as these might be legitimately held to furnish, of the 
independent de novo production of individual members of 
any single species. On the contrary, the evidence lies so en- 
tirely the other way, that he reasons on the existence of a 
family relation obtaining between all the members of each 
species, as one of his best established principles. If mem. 
bers of the same species may exist through de novo produc: 
tion, without hereditary relationship, so thoroughly, in con- 
sequence, does the fabric of geological reasoning fall to the 
ground, that we find ourselves incapacitated from regarding 
even the bed of common cockle or mussel shells, which we 
find lying a few feet from the surface on our raised beaches, 
as of the existing creation at all. Nay, even the human re- 
mains of our moors may have belonged, if our principle of 
relationship in each species be not a true one, to some for- 
mer creation, cut off from that to which we ourselves belong, 
by a wide period of death. All paleontological reasoning is 
at an end forever, if identical species can originate in in- 
dependent centres, widely separated from each other by pe- 
riods of time; and if they fail to originate in periods sepa- 
rated by time, how or why in centres separated by space ? 
Let the reader remark further, the bearing of those facts 
from which this principle of geological reasoning has been 
derived, on the development hypothesis. We find species 
restricted to circles and periods; and though stragglers are 
occasionally fund outside the circle in the existing state 
of things, never are they found beyond their period among 


256 CONSEQUENCES 


the remains of the past. It was profoundly argued by Cu 
vier, that life could not possibly have had a chemical origin 
“In fact,” we find him remarking, “ life exercising upon the 
elements which at every instant form part of the living body, 
and upon those which it attracts to it, an action contrary t 
that which would be produced without it by the usual chem 
ical affinities, it is inconsistent to suppose that it can itself 
be produced by these affinities.” And the phenomene of re 
striction to circle and period testify to the same effect. Noth 
ing, on the one hand, can be more various in character and 
aspect than the organized existences of the various circles 
and periods; nothing more invariable, on the other, than the 
results of chemical or electrical experiment. And yet, to use 
almost the words of Cuvier, ‘* we know of no other power in 
nature capable of reuniting previously separated molecules,” 
than the electric and the chemical. To these agents, accord- 
ingly, all the assertors of the development hypothesis have had 
recourse for at least the origination of life. Air, water, earth 
existing as a saline mucus, and an active persistent electri- 
city, are the creative ingredients of Oken. The author of the 
““ Vestiges” is rather less explicit on the subject: he simply 
refers to the fact, that the * basis of all vegetable and animal 
substances consists of nucleated cells, —that is, of cells having 
granules within them ;” and states that globules of a resem- 
bling character “can be produced in albumen by electrici- 
fy ;’? and that though albumen itself has not yet been pro- 
duced by artificial means,— the only step in the process of 
creation which is wanting, —it is yet known to be a chemical 
compcsition, the mode of whose production may “ be any 
day discovered in the laboratory.” Further, he adopts, ag 
part of the foundation of his hypothesis, the pseudo-experi- 
ment of Mr. Weekes, who holds that out of certain saline 


GF THE LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS. 257 


preparations, acted upon by electricity, he can produce cer 
tain living animalcula of the mite family ; — the vital and the 
organized out of the inorganic and the dead. In all suct 
cases, electricity, or rather, according to Oken, galvanism, is 
egarded as the vitalizing principle. ‘“ Organism,” says the 
German, “is galvanism residing in a thoroughly homogene- 
cus mass. . . . . A galvanic pile pounded into atoms 
must become alive. In this manner nature brings forth ot- 
ganic bodies.” I have even heard it seriously asked whether 
electricity be not God! Alas! could such a god, limited 
in its capacity of action, like those “ gods of the plains” in 
which the old Syrian trusted, have wrought, in the character 
of Creator, with a variety of result so endless, that in no geo- 
logic period has repetition taken place? In all that purports 
to be experiment on the development side of the question, we 
see nothing else save repetition. The Acarus Crossi of Mr. 
Weekes is not a new species, but the repetition of an old 
one, which has been long known as the Acarus horridus, a 
little bristle-covered creature of the mite family, that harbors 
in damp corners among the debris of outhouses, and the dust 
and dirt of neglected workshops aud laboratories. Nay, even 
a change in the chemical portion of the experiment by which 
he believed the creature to be produced, failed to secure va 
riety. A powerful electric current had been sent, in the firs! 
instance, through a solution of silicate of potash, and, after a 
time, the Acarus horridus crawled out of the fluid. The cur- 
rent was then sent through a solution of nitrate of copper, ai:d 
after a due space, ‘he Acarus horridus again creeped out. A 
solution of ferro- -anate of potash was next subjected to the 
current, and yet again, and in greater numbers than on the 
two former occasions, there appeared, as in virtue, it would 


seem, of its extraordinary appetency, to be the same ever: 
22 * 


958 CONSEQUENCES 


recurring Acarus horridus. How, or in wi.at form, the little 
creature should have been introduced into the several experi- 
ments, it is not the part of those who question their legiti- 
macy to explain ; it 1s enough for us to know, that individ 
uals of the family to which the Acarus belongs are so re- 
markable for their powers of life, even in their fully developed 
state, as to resist, for a time, the application of boiling water, 
and to live long in alcohol. We know, further, that the 
germs of the lower animals are greatly more tenacious of vi- 
tality than the animals themselves; and that they may exist 
in their state of embryonism in the most unthought of and 
elusive forms; nay, —as the recent discoveries regarding al- 
tzrations of generation have conclusively shown, — that the 
germ which produced the parent may be wholly unlike the 
germ that produces its offspring, and yet identical with that 
which produced the parent’s parent. Save on the theory of 
a quiescent vitality, maintained by seeds for centuries within 
a few inches of the earth’s surface, we know not how a layer 
of shell, sand, or marl, spread over the bleak moors of Har- 
ris, should produce crops of white clover, where only heath 
had grown before; nor how brakes of doddered furze burnt 
down on the slopes of the Cromarty Sutors should be so fre- 
quently succeeded by thickets of raspberry. We are not, 
however to give up the unknown, — that illimitable province in 
which science discovers, —to be a wild region of dream, in 
which fantasy may invent. There are many dark places in the 
field of human knowledge which even the researches of ages 
may fail wholly to enlighten; but no one derives a right 
from that circumstance to people them with chimeras and 
phantoms. They belong to the philosophers of the future, — 
not to the visionaries of the present. But while it is not our 
part to explain how, in the experiments of Mr. Weekes, thn 


OF THE LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS 259 


thain -f life from life has been maintained uabroken, we 
can most conclusively show, that that world of organized 
existence of which we ourselves form part, is, and ever has 
been, a world, not of tame repetition, but of endless variety. 
It is palpably not a world of Acarid@ of one species, nor 
yet of creatures developed from these, under those electric 
or chemical laws of which the grand characteristic is inva- 
riability of result. The vast variety of its existences speak 
not of the operation of unvarying laws, that represent, in 
their uniformity of result, the unchangeableness of the Di- 
vinity, but of creative acts, that exemplify the infinity of His 
resources. 

Let the reader yet further remark, if he has followed me 
through these preliminary observations, what is really in- 
volved in the hypothesis of the author of the “* Vestiges,” re- 
garding the various floras common to the British islands and 
the Continent. If it was upon his scheme that England, Ire- 
land, and the mainland of Europe came to possess an identi- 
cal flora, production de novo and by repetition of the same 
species must have taken place in thousands of instances along 
the shores of each island and of the mainland. His hypothe- 
sis demands that the sea-weed on the coast of Ireland should 
have been developed, first through lower, and then higher 
forms, into thousands of terrestrial plants,—that exactly 
the same process of development from sea-weed into terres- 
trial plants of the same species should have taken place on 
the zoast of Englard, and again on the coasts of the Con- 
‘inent generally,—and that identically the same vegetation 
shou d have been originated in this way in at least three great 
centres. And if planis of the same species could have had 
three distinct centres of organization and development, why 
not three huncred, or three thousand, or three hundred thou 


260 CONSEQUENCES 


sand? Nor will it do to attempt escaping from the difficulty, 
by alleging that there is he groundwork in the case of at 
least a common marine vegetation to start from; and that 
thus, ‘f we have not properly the existence of the direct 
hered:tary tie among the various individuals of each spec.es, 
we may yet recognize at least a sort of collateral relationship 
among them, derived from the relationship of their marine 
ancestry. For relationship, in even the primary stage, the 
author of the “* Vestiges ” virtually repudiates, by adopting, 
as one of the foundations of his hypothesis, with, of course, 
all the legitimate consequences, the experiments of Mr. 
Weekes. The animalcule-making process is instanced as 
representative of the first stage of being,— that in which 
dead inorganic matter assumes vitality ; and it corresponds, 
in the zoological branch, to the production of a low marine 
vegetation in the phytological one. A certain semi-chemical, 
semi-e.ectrical process, originates, time after time, certain 
numerous low forms of life, identical in species, but con- 
nected by no tie of relationship : such is the presumed result 
of the Weekes experiment. A certain further process of 
development matures low forms of life, thus originated, inte 
higher species, also identical, and also wholly unconnected 
by the family tie: such are the consequences legitimately 
involved in that island-vegetation theory promulgated by the 
author of the ‘“¢ Vestiges.””. And be it remembered that Mr. 
Weekes’ process, so far as itis simply electrical and chemical, 
is a process which is as capable of having been gone through 
in all times and all places, as that other process of strewing 
marl upon a moor, through which certain rustic experimenters 
have held that uhey produced white clover. It could have 
been gone through during the Carboniferous or the Silurian. 


period; for all truly chemical and electrical experiments 


OF THE LAMALCKIAN HYPOTHESIS. 261 


would hay2 resulted in manifestations of the same phenom- 
ena tien as now ;— an acid would have effervesced as freely 
with an alkali; and each fibre of an electrified feather — 
had feathers then existed — would have stood out as decided- 
ly apart from all its neighbors. _We must therefore hold, if 
we believe with the author of the “* Vestiges,” first, from the 
Weekes experiment, that in all times, and in all places, every 
centre of a certain chemical and electric action would have 
become a new centre of creation to certain recent species of 
low, but not very low, organization; and, second, from his 
doctrine regarding the identity of the British and Continental 
floras, that in the course of subsequent development from 
these low forms, the process in each of many widely-sepa- 
rated centres, — widely separated both by space and time, — 
would be so nicely correspondent with the process in all 
the others, that the same higher recent forms would be ma- 
tured in al]. And to doctrines such as these, the experience 
of all Geologists, all Phytologists, all Zoologists, is diametri- 
cally opposed. If these doctrines be true, their sciences are 
fa‘se in their facts, end idle and urfounded in their principles 


26:2 THE TWO FLORAS 


THE TWO FLORAS, MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 


BEARINS OF THE EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT. 


Is the reader acquainted with the graphic verse, and scarce 
less graphic prose, in which Crabbe describes the appear- 
ances presented by a terrestrial vegetation affected by the 
waters of the sea? In both passages, as in all his purely 
descriptive writings, there is a solidity of truthful observa- 
tion exhibited, which triumphs over their general homeiinesa 
of vein. 


‘«¢ On either side 
Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide, 
With dykes on either hand, by ocean self-supplied. 
Far on the right the distant sea is seen, 
And salt the springs that feed the marsh between ; 
Beneath an ancient bridge the straitened flood 
Rolls through its sloping banks of slimy mud; 
Near it a sunken boat resists the tide, 
That frets and hurries to the opposing side ; 
The rushes sharp, that on the borders grow, 
Bend their brown florets to the stream below, ~ 
Impure in all its course, in all its progress slow. 
Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom, 
Nor wears a rosy blush, nor sheds perfume. 
The few dull flowers that o’er the place are spread, 
Partake the nature of their fenny bed; 
Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, 
Grows the salt lavender, that lacks perfume ; 


MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 264 


Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh, 
And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh. 

Low on the ear the distant billows sound, 

And just in view appears their stony bound.” 


“The ditches of a fen so near the ocean,” says the poet, in 
the note which accompanes this passage, “are lined with 
irregular patches of a coarse-stained laver; a muddy sedi- 
ment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs which 
in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a fat-leaved, 
pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in tne year, and 
the razor-edged bullrush in the summer and autumn. The 
fen itself has a dark and saline herbage: there are rushes 
and arrow-head ; and in a few patches the flakes of the cot- 
ton-grass are seen, but more commonly the sea-aster, the dull- 
est of that numerous and hardy genus; a thrift, blue in 
flower, but withering, and remaining withered till the winter 
scatters it; the salt-wort, both simple and shrubby; a few 
kinds of grass changed by the soil and atmosphere ; and low 
plants of two or three denominations, undistinguished in the 
general view of scenery ; — such is the vegetation of the fen 
where it is at a small distance from the ocean.” 

And such are the descriptions of Crabbe, at once a poet 
and a botanist. In referring to the blue tint exhibited in 
salt-fens by the pink-colored flower of the thrift, (Statice 
Armeria,) he might have added, that the general green of 
the terrestrial vegetation likewise assumes, when subjected 
to those modified marine influences ander which plants of the 
land can continue to live, a decided tinge of blue. It is further 
noticeable, that the general brown of at least the larger algie 
presents, as they creep upwards upon the beach to meet with 
these, a marked tinge of yellow. The prevailing brown of 
the one flora approximates towards yellow, — the prevailing 


264 THE TWO FLORAS, 


green of the other towards blue; and thus, instead of mu. 
tually merging intc some neutral tint, they assume at their 
line of meeting directly antagonistic hues. 

But what does experience say regarding the transmutative 
conversion of a marine into a terrestrial vegetation, — that 
experience on which the sceptic founds so much? As I 
wa.ked along the green edge of the Lake of Stennis, selvaged 
by the line of detached weeds with which a recent gale had 
strewed its shores, and marked that for the first few miles 
the accumulation consisted of marine alge, here and there 
mixed with tufts of stunted reeds or rushes, and that as I re- 
ceded from the sea it was the alge that became stunted and 
dwarfish, and that the reeds, aquatic grasses, and rushes, 
grown greatly more bulky in the mass, were also more fully 
developed individually, till at length the marine vegetation 
altogether disappeared, and the vegetable debris of the shore 
became purely lacustrine, —I asked myself whether here, if 
anywhere, a transition flora between lake and sea ought not to 
be found? For many thousand years ere the tall gray obelisks 
of Stennis, whose forms [ saw this morning reflected in the 
water, had been torn from the quarry, or laid down in mystic 
circle on their flat promontories, had this lake admitted 
the waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches 
and fresh in its higher. And during this protracted period had 
its quiet, well-shattered bottom been exposed to no disturbing 
influences through which the delicate process of transmu- 
tation could have been marred or arrested. Here, then, if 
in any circumstances, ought we to have had in the broad, 
permanently brackish reaches, at least indications of a vege- 
tation intermediate in its nature between the monocotyle. 
dons of the lake and the alge of the sea; and yet not a 
vestige of such an intermediate vegetation could 1 find 


MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. 265 
among the up-piled debris of the mixed floras, marine and 
lacustrine. ‘The lake possesses no such intermediate vege 
tation. As the water freshens in its middle reaches, the 
aigee become dwarfish and ill-developed; one syecies after 
another ceases to appear, as the habitat becomes wholly un- 
favorable to it, until at length we find, instead of the 
brown, rootless, flewerless fucoids and conferve of the ocean, 
the green, rooted, flower-bearing flags, rushes, and aquatic 
grasses of the fresh water. Many thousands of years have 
failed to originate a single intermediate plant. And such 
tested by a singularly extensive experience, is the genera 
evidence. 

There is scarce a chain-length of the shores of Britain and 
Ireland that has not been a hundred and a hundred times 
explored by the botanist, —keen to collect and prompt to 
register every rarity of the vegetable kingdom; but has he 
ever yet succeeded in transferring to his herbarium a single 
plant caught in the transition state? Nay, are there any of 
the laws under which the vegetable kingdom exists better 
Known than those laws which fix certain species of the alge to 
certain zones of coast, in which eacn, according to the overly- 
ing depth of water and the nature of the bottom, finds the only 
habitat in which it can exist? The rough-stemmed tangle 
(Laminaria digitata) can exist no higher on the shore than 
the low line of ebb during stream-tides ; the smooth-stemmed 
tangle (Laminaria saccharina) flourishes along an inner bélt, 
partially uncovered during the ebbs of the larger neaps; 
the forked and cracker kelp-weeds (Fucus serratus and Fucus 
nodosus) thrive ina zone still less deeply covered by water, 
and which even the lower neaps expose. And at least one 
other species of kelp-weed, the Fucus vesiculosus, occurs in a 


tone higher still, though, as it creeps upwards on the rocky 
23 


266 THE TWO FLORAS, 


beach, it loses is characteristic bladders, and becomes shor 
and narrow of frond. The thick brown tufts of Fucus canali- 
culatus, which in the lower and middle reaches of the Lake 
of Stennis I found heaped up in great abundance along the 
shores, also rises high on rocky beaches, — so high in some 
instances, that during neap-tides it remains uncovered by 
the water for days together. If, as is not uncommon, there 
be an escape of land springs along the beach, there may be 
found, where the fresh water oozes out through the sand 
and gravel, an upper terminal zone of the confervee, chiefly 
of-a green color, mixed with the ribbon-like green laver, 
(Ulva latissima,) the purplish-brown laver, (Porphyra lact- 
viata,) and still more largely with the green silky Ente: 
romorpha, (E. compressa.) * And then, decidedly within 
the line of the storm-beaches of winter, — not unfrequently 
in low sheltered bays, such as the Bay of Udale or of Nigg, 
where the ripple of every higher flood washes, — we may 
find the vegetation of the land— represented by the sen- 
tinels and picquets of its outposts —coming down, as if to 
meet with the higher-growing plants of the sea. In salt 
marshes the two vegetations may be seen, if I may so ex- 
press myself, dovetailed together at their edges, — at least one 
species of club-rush (Scirpus maritimus) and the common salt- 
wort and glasswort (Salsola kali and Salicornia procumbens) 
encroaching so far upon the sea as to mingle with a thinly- 





~ 


« «Dr, Neill mentions,” says the Rev. Mr. Landsborough, in his 
complete and very interesting “ History of British Sea- Weeds,” “ that 
on our shores alge generally occupy zones in the following order, be- 
ginning from deep water: — F. Filum; F. esculentus and bulbosus , 
F. digttatus, saccharinus, and loreus ; F. serratus and crisrus ; F. nodo- 
sus and vesiculosus; F. canaliculatus ; and, last of all, F. pygmeua, 
which is satisfied if it be within reach of the spray.” 


MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL 267 


scattered and sorely-diminished fucus,— that bladderless va- 
nety of the Fucus vesiculosus to which I have alzeady referred, 
and which may be detected in such localities, shooting forth 
its minute brown fronds from the pebbles. On rocky coasts, 
where springs of fresh water come trickling down along the 
fissures of the precipices, the observer may see a variety of 
Rhodomenia palmata— the fresh-water dulse of the Moray 
Frith — creeping upwards from the lower limits of produc- 
tion, till just where the common gray balanus ceases tc 
grow. And there, short and thick, and of a bleached yel- 
low hue, it ceases also; but one of the commoner marine 
conferve, — the Conferva arcta, blent with a dwarfed En- 
teromorpha,— commencing a very little below where the 
dulse ends, and taking its place, clothes over the runnels 
with its covering of green for several feet higher: in some 
cases, where it is frequently washed by the upward dash of 
‘he waves, it rises above even the flood-line ; and in some 
srevice of the rock beside it, often as low as its upper edge, 
we may detect stunted tufts of the sea-pink or of the scurvy- 
grass. But while there is thus a vegetation intermediate in 
place between the land and the sea, we find, as if it had been 
selected purposely to confound the transmutation theory, 
that it is in no degree intermediate in character. For, while 
it is chiefly marine weeds of the lower division of the con- 
fervee that creep upwards from the sea to meet the vegeta: 
tion of the land, it is chiefly terrestrial plants of the higher 
division of the dicotyledons that creep downwards from the 
land to meet the vegetation of the sea. The salt-worts, the 
glass-worts, the arenaria, the thrift, and the scurvy-grass, are 
all dicotyledonous plants. Nature draws a deeply-marked 
line of division where the requirements of the transmutative 
ypothesis would demand the nicely graduated softness of a 


26S : BEARING 


shaded one; and, addressing the strongly marked floras or 
cither hand, even more sternly than the waves tnemselves, 
demands that toa certain definite bourne should they come, 
and no farther. 

But in what form, it may be asked, or with what limita 
tions, ought the Christian controversialist to avail himself, in 
this question, of the experience argument? Much ought to 
depend, I reply, on the position taken up by the opposite 
side. We find no direct reference made by the author of 
the “ Vestiges”’ to the anti-miracle argument, first broached 
by Hume, in a purely metaphysical shape, in his well-known 
« Inquiry,” and afterwards thrown into the algebraic form by 
La Place, in his Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités. But 
we do not detect its influences operative throughout the entire 
work. It is because of some felt impracticability on the part 
of its author, of attaining to the prevailing belief in the miracle 
of creation, that he has recourse, instead, to the so-called law 
of development. The Jaw and the miracle are the alternatives 
placed before him ; and, rejecting the miracle, he closes with 
the Jaw. Now, in such circumstances, he can have no more 
cause of complaint, if, presenting him with the experience 
argument of Hume and La Place, we demand that he square 
the evidence regarding the existence of his law strictly ac- 
cording to its requirements, than the soldier of an army that 
eharged its field-pieces with rusty nails would have cause of 
complaint if he found himself wounded by a missile of a 
similar kind, sent against him by the artillery of the enemy. 
You cannot, it might be fairly said, in addressing him, ac- 
quiesce in the miracle here, because, as a violation of the laws 
of nature, there are certain objections, founded on invariable 
experience, which bear direct against your belief in it. Weil, 
here are the obje:tions, in the strongest form in which they 


OF THE EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT 269 


have yet been stated; and here is your hypothesis respecting 
the development of marine alge into terrestrial plants. We 
hoid that against that h pothesis the objections bear at least 
as directly as against any miracle whatever, —nay, that not 
only is it contrary to an invariable experience, but opposed 
alsc to all testimony. We regard it as a mere idle dreaun, 
Maillet dreamed it, —and Lamarck dreamed it, — and Oken 
dreamed it; but none of them did more than merely dream 
it: its existence rests on exactly the same basis of evidence 
as tha. of Whang the miller’s “ monstrous pot of gold and 
diamonds,” of which he dreamed three nights in succession, 
but which he never succeeded in finding. If we are in error 
n our estimate, here is the argument, and here the hypothesis ; 
give us, in support of the hypothesis, the amount of evidence, 
founded on a solid experience, which the argument demands. 

But to leave the experience argument in exactly the state 
in which it was left by Hume and La Place, would be doing 
dy real justice to our subject. It is in that state quite suffi- 
cient to establish the fact, that there can be no real escape 
from belief in acts of creation never witnessed by man, to 
processes of development never witnessed by man; seeing 
that a presumed law beyond the cognizance of experience 
must be as certainly rejected, on the principle of the argu: 
ment, as a presumed miracle beyond that cognizance. Ik 
places the presumed Jaw and the presumed miracle on exactly 
the same level. But there is a palpable flaw in the anti-miza- 
cle argument. It does not prove that miracles may not have 
taken place, but that miracles, whether they have taken place 
or no, are not to be credited, and this simply because they are 
miracles, z. €. violations of the established laws of nature. 
And if it be possible for events to take place which man, or 


certain principles, is imperatively required not to credit, these 
23 * 


270 BEARING 


principies must of course serve merely to establish a discrep 
ancy between the actual state of things, and what is to be 
believed regarding it. And thus, instead of serving purpuses 
of truth, they are made to subserve purposes of error ; for 
the existence of truth in the mind is neither more nor less 
chan the existence of certain conceptions and beliefs, ade- 
quately representative of what actually 7s, or what really has 
taken place. 

I cannot better illustrate this direct tendency of the ant- 
miracle argument to destroy truth in the mind, by bringing 
the mental beliefs into a state of nonconformity with the pos- 
sible and actual, than by a quotation from La Place himself: 
‘We would not,” he says, *¢ give credit toa man who would 
ffirm that he saw a hundred dice thrown into the air, and that 
shey all fell on the same faces. If we had ourselves been 
spectators of such an event, we would not believe our own 
eyes till we had scrupulously examined all the circumstances, 
and assured ourselves that there was no trick or deception. 
After such an examination, we would not hesitate to admit 
it, notwithstanding its great improbability; and no one 
would have recourse to an inversion of the laws of vision 
in order to account for it.” Now, here is the principle broad- 
ly laid down, that it is impossible to communicate by the 
evidence of testimony, belief in an event which might 
happen, and which, if it happened, ought on certain condi. 
tions to be credited. No one knew better than La Place 
himself, that the possibility of the event which he instanced 
could be represented with the utmost exactitude by figures. 
The probability, in throwing a single die, that the ace wil’ 
be presented on its upper face, is as one in six, —six being 
the entire number of sides which the cube can possibly pre- 
sent, and the side with tke ace being one of these ; — the 


©F THE EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT. 271 


probability that in throwing a pair of dice the aces of both 
will be at once presented on their upper faces, is as one in 
thirty-six, as against the one sixth chance of the ave being 
presented by the one, there are also six chances that the ace 
of the other should not concur with it;— and in throwing 
three dice, the probability that their three aces should be at 
once presented is, of course, on the same principle, as one in 
six times thirty-six, or, in other words, as one in two hundred 
and sixteen. And thus, in ascertaining the exact degree of 
probability of the hundred aces at once turning up, we have 
to go on multiplying by six, for each die we add to the num- 
ber, the product» of the immediately previous calculation. 
Unquestionably, the number of chances against, thus balanced 
with the single chance for, would be very great ; but its exist- 
ence as a definite number would establish, with all the force of 
arithmetical demonstration, the possibility of the event; and 
if an eternity were to be devoted to the throwing into the air 
of the hundred dice, it would occur an infinite number of times. 
And yet the principle of Hume and La Place forms, when 
adopted, an impassable gulf between this possibility and hu 
man belief. The possibility might be embodied, as we see, In 
an actual occurrence,—an occurrence witnessed by hun- 
dreds; and yet the anti-miracle argument, as illustrated by 
La Place, would cut off all communication regarding it be- 
tween these hundreds of witnesses, nowever unexceptionable 
their character as such, and the rest of mankind. The prin- 
ciple, instead of giving us a right rule through: which the 
beliefs in the mind are to be rendered correspondent with the 
reality of things, goes merely to establish a certain imperfec 
tion of transmission from one mind to another, in consequence 
of which, rea ities in fact, if very extraordinary ones, could 
not possibly be receivec as objects of belief, nor the mental 


272 BEARING 


appreciation of things be rendered adequately concurrent with 
the state in which the things really existed. 

Nor is the case different when, for a possibility which the 
arithmetician can represent by figures, we substitute the 
miracle proper. Neither Hume nor La Place ever attempted 
to show that miracles could not take place; they merely di- 
rected their argument against a belief in them. The wildest 
sceptic must admit, if in any degree a reasonable man, that 
there may exist a God, and that that God may have given laws 
to nature. No demonstration of the non-existence of a Great 
First Cause has been ever yet attempted, nor, until the knowl- 
edge of some sceptic extends over all space, ever can be 
rationally attempted. Merely to doubt the fact of God’s ex- 
istence, and to give reasons for the doubt, must till then form 
the highest achievements of scepticism. And the God who 
may thus exist, and who may have given laws to nature, may 
also have revealed himself to man, and, in order to secure man’s 
reasonable belief in the reality of the revelation, may have 
temporarily suspended in its operation some great natural 
law, and have thus shown himself to be its Author and 
Master. Such seems to be the philosophy of miracles; which 
are thus evidently not only not impossibilities, but even not 
improbabilities. Even were we to permit the sceptic himself 
to fix the numbers representative of those several mays in 
the case, which! have just repeated, the chances against them, 
sc to speak, would be less by many thousand times than the 
chances against the hundred dice of La Place’s illustration 
all turning up aces. The existence of a Great First Cause 
is at least as proba»le— the sceptic himself being judge 
in the matter—as the non-existence of a Great First 
Cause; and so the probability in this first stage of the ar- 
gument, instead of being, as in the case of the single ‘ie, 


OF THE EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT. 273 


only one to six, is as one ta one. Again,—in accordance 
with an expectation so general among the human family as to 
form one of the great instincts of our nature,—an instinct 
to which every form of religion, true or false, bears evidence, 
— it is in no degree less probable that this God should have 
revealed himself to man, than that he should not have re- 
vealed himself to man; and here the chances are again as 
one to one, — not, as in the second stage of the calculation 
vn the dice, as one to thirty-six. Nor, in the third and last 
stage, is it less probable that God, in revealing himself to man 
should have given miraculous evidence of the truth of the 
zevelation, so that man “ might believe in Him for His work’s 
sake,” than that He should not have done so; and here yet 
again the chances are as one to one, — not as one to two hun- 
dred and sixteen. No rational sceptic could fix the chances 
lower ; nay, no rational sceptic, so far as the ewistence of a 
Great First Cause is concerned, would be inclined to fix 
them so low: and yet it is in order to annihilate all belief in 
a possibility against which the chances are so few as to be 
_ represented — scepticism itself being the actuary in the case 
— by three units, that Hume and La Place have framed their 
argument. Miracles may have taken place, — the probabili- 
ties against them, stated in their most extreme and exag- 
gerated form, are by no means many or strong; but we are 
nevertheless not to believe that they did take place, simply 
because miracles they were. Now, the effect of the establisa 
ment of a principle such as this would be simply, I repeat, the 
destruction of the ability of transmitting certain beliefs, how- 
ever well founded originally, from one set or generation of 
men to another. These beliefs the first set or generation 
might, on La Place’s own principles, be compelled to enter. 
tain. The evidence of the senses however wonderful the 


274 BEARING 


event which they certified, is not, he himself tells us, to be 
resisted. But the conviction which, on one set of principles, 
these men were on no account to resist, the men that came 
immediately after them were, on quite another set of prin- 
ciples, on no account to entertain. And thus the anti-miracle 
argument, instead of leading, as all true philos»phy ought, to 
an exact correspondence between the realities of things and 
the convictions received by the mind regarding them, palpably 
forms a bar to the reception of beliefs, adequate to the possi- 
bilities of actual occurrence or event, and so constitutes an 
imperfection or flaw in the mental economy, instead of work- 
ing an improvement. And, in accordance with this view, 
we find that in the economy of minds of the very highest 
order this imperfection or flaw has had no place. Locke 
studied and wrote upon the subject of miracles proper, and 
exhibited in his “ Discourse” all the profundity of his ex- 
traordinary mind; and yet Locke was a believer. Newton 
studied and wrote on the subject of miracles of another kind, 
- those of prophecy; and he also, as shown by his “ Obser- 
vations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse,” 
was a believer. Butler studied and wrote on the subject of 
miracles, chiefly in connection with “ Miraculous Revela. 
tien; ? and he also was a believer. Chalmers studied and 
wrote on the subject of miracles in his “‘ Evidences,” after 
Hume, La Place, and Playfair had all promulgated their pe- 
culiar views regarding it; and he also was a believer. And 
in none o” the truly distinguished men of the present day, 
though all intimately acquainted with the anti-miracle argu- 
ment, is this flaw or imperfection found to exist: on the con- 
trary, they all hold, as becomes the philosophic intellect and 
character, that whatever is possible may occur, and that what 
ever occurs ought, on the proper evidence, to be believed, 


OF THE EXPL&SIENCE ARGUMENT. 275 


But though the experience argument is of no real force, 
and, as shown by the beliefs of the higher order of minds, of 
no real effect, when brought to bear against miracles sup: 
ported by the proper testimony, it is of great force and effect 
when brought to bear, not against miracles, but against some 
presumed /aw. It is experience, and experience only, that 
determines what is or is not law , and it is law, and law only, 
that constitutes the subject-matter of ordinary experience. 
Experience, in determining what is really miracle, does so 
simply through its positive knowledge of law: by knowing 
law, it knows also what would be a violation of it. And 
so miracle cannot possibly form the subject-matter of ex. 
perience in the sense of Hume. For did miracle consti- 
tute the subject-matter of experience, the law of which the 
miracle was a violation could not : most emphatically, in this 
case, were there “‘no law” there could be “no transgress- 
ion;” and so experience would be unable to recognize, not 
only the existence of the law transgressed, but also of the 
miracle, in its character as such, which was a transgression 
of the law. We determine from experience that there 
exists a certain fixed law, known among men as the law 
of gravitation; and that, in consequence of this law, if a 
human creature attempt standing upon the sea, he will sink 
into it; or if he attempt rising from the earth into the heavens 
he will remain fixed to the spot on which the attempt is 
made. Such, in these cases, would be the direct effects of 
tnis gravitation Jaw; and any presumed law antagonistic in 
its character could not be other than a law contrary to that 
invariable experience by which the existence of the real law 
in the case is determined. But vertain it is—for the evi- 
dence regarding the facts cannot be resisted, and by the 
greater minds has not been resisted — that a man did once 


276 BEARING OF THE EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT. 


walk upon, the sea without sinking into it, and did once 
ascend from the earth into the sky; and these miracles 
ought not to be tested — and by earnest inquirers after truth 
really never have been tested —by any experience of the 
uniformity of the law of which they were professed trans- 
gressions, seeing it was essentially and obviously necessary 
that, in order to serve the great moral purpose which God 
intended by them, the law which they violated should have 
been a uniform law, and that they should have been palpable 
violations of it. But while the experience argument is thus 
of no value when directed against well-attested miracle, it is, 
as I have said, all-potent when directed against presumed 
law. Of law we know nothing, I repeat, except what expe- 
rience tells us. A miracle contrary to experience in the 
sense of Hume is simply a miracle ; a presumed law contrary , 
to experience is no law at all. For it is from experience, 
and experience only, that we know any thing of natural 
law. The argument of Hume and La Place 1s perfect, as 
such, when directed against the development visions of the 
Lamarckian 


THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN EMBRYO. 277 


tHE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC 
STATE. 


OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS, 


Wuen Maillet first promulgated his hypothesis, many of the 
departments of natural history existed as mere regions of 
fable and romance ; and, in addressing himself to the Musca- 
dins of Paris, in a popular work as wild and amusing as a 
fairy tale, he could safely take the liberty, and he did take it 
very freely, of exaggerating the marvellous, and adding fresh 
fictions to the untrue. And in preparing them for his theory 
of the metamorphoses of a marine into a terrestrial vegeta- 
tion, he set himself, in accordance with his general character, 
to show that really the transmutation did not amcunt to 
much. ‘IT know you have resided a long time,” his Indian 
Philosopher is made to say, “at Marseilles. Now, you can 
bear me witness, that the fishermen there daily find in their 
nets, and among their fish, plants of a hundred kinds, with 
their fruits still upon them; and though these fruits are not 
so large and so well nourished as those of our earth, yet 
the species of these plants is in no other respect dubious. 
They there find clusters of white and black grapes, peach- 
trees, pear-trees, prune-trees, apple-trees, and all sorts of 


flowers. When in that city, I saw, in the cabinet of a curious 
24 


278 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


gentleman, a prodigious number of thuse sea-productions of 
different qualities, especially of rose-trees, which had their 
roses very red when they came out of the sea. I was there 
presented with a cluster of black sea-grapes. It was at the 
‘ime of the vintage, and there were two grapes perfectly 
ripe.” | 

Now, all this, and much more of the same nature, ad- 
dressed to the Parisians of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, 
passed, I doubt not, wonderfully well ; but it will not do now, 
when almost every young girl, whether in town or country, is 
a botanist, and works on the alge have become popular. Since 
Maillet wrote, Hume promulgated his argument on Miracles, 
and La Place his doctrine of Probabilities. ‘There can be no 
doubt that these have exerted a wholesome influence on the 
laws of evidence; and by these laws, as restricted and 
amended, — laws to which, both in science and religion, we 
ourselves conform, — we insist on trying the Lamarckian 
hypothesis, and in condemning it,— should it be found to have 
neither standing in experience nor support from testimony, — 
as a mere feverish dream, incoherent in its parts and base 
less in its fabric. Give, we ask, but one well-attested in 
stance of transmutation from the alge to even the lower 
forms of terrestrial vegetation common on our sea-coasts, 
and we will keep the question open, in expectation of more. 
It will not do to tell us—as Cuvier was told, when he ap- 
pealed to the fact, determined by the mummy birds and rep- 
tiles of Egypt, of the fixity of species in all, even the slightest 
particulars, for at least three thousand years— that immensely 
extended periods of time are necessary to effect specific 
changes, and that human observation has not been spread over 
a pertod sufficiently ample to furnish the required data re- 
garding them. The apology is simply a confession that, in 


IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 279 


these ages of the severe inductive philosophy, you have been 
dreaining your dream, cut off, as if by the state of sleep, from 
all the tangibilities of the real waking-day world, and that you 
have not a vestige of testimony with which to support your 
ingenious vagaries. 
But on another account do we refuse to sustain the excuse. 
[t is not true that human observation has not been spread 
over a feriod sufficiently extended to furnish the necessary 
data for testing the development hypothesis. In one special 
walk,— that which bears on the supposed transmutation ° 
of alge into terrestrial plants, —human observation has 
been spread over what is strictly analogous to millions of 
years. For extent of space in this matter is exactly corre- 
spondent with duration of time. No man, in this late period 
of the world’s history, attains to the age of five hundred 
years ; and as some of our larger English oaks have been 
known to increase in bulk of trunk and extent of bough for 
five centuries together, no man can possibly have seen the 
same huge oak pass, according to Cowper, through its va- 
rious stages of “ treeship,’? — 
“ First a seedling hid in grass; 

Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolls 

Slow after century, a giant bulk, 

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root 

Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed 

With prominent wens globose.” 
But though no man lives throughout five hundred years of 
time, he can trace, by passing in some of the English forests 
through five hundred yards of space, the history of the oak 
in all its stages of growth, as correctly as if he did live 
throughout the five hundred years. Oaks, in the space of a 
few hundred yards, may be seen in every stage of growth, 
from the newly burst acorn, that presents to the light its 


£80 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


two fleshy lobes, with the first tender rudiments of a leaflet 
between, up to the giant of the forest, in the hollow of whose 
trunk the red deer may shelter, and find ample room for the 
broad spread of his antlers. The fact of the development of 
the oak, from the minute two-lobed seedling of a week’s 
growth up to the gigantic tree of five centuries, is as capable 
of being demonstrated by observation spread over five hun- 
dred yards of space, as by observation spread over five hun- 
dred years of time. And be it remembered, that the sea- 
coasts of the world are several hundred thousand miles in ex- 
tent. Europe is by far the smallest of the earth’s four large 
divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion to its size, by a 
greater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the 
sea-coasts of Europe alone, including those of its islands, 
exceed twenty-five thousand miles. We have results before 
us, in this extent of space, identical with those of many hun- 
dred thousand years of time; and if terrestrial plants were 
as zertainly developments of the low plants of the sea as the 
huge oak is a development of the immature seedling, just 
sprung from the acorn, so vast a stretch of sea-coast could not 
fail to present us with the intermediate vegetation in all its 
stages. But the sea-coasts fail to exhibit even a vestige of 
the intermediate vegetation. Experience spread over an ex- 
tent of space analogous to millions of years of time, does 
not furnish, in this department, a single fact corroborative 
of the development theory, but, on the contrary, many hun- 
dreds of facts that bear directly against it. 

The author of the “ Vestiges ” is evidently a practised and 
tasteful writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combi- 
aations of thought; but those powers of abstract reflection 
on whose vigorous exercise the origination of argument de 
pends, nature szems to have denied him. There are ‘wa 


———— 


IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 281 


things in especial which his work wants, — original observa- 
‘ton and abstract thought, — the power of seeing for himself 
and of reasoning for himself; and what we find instead is 
simply a vivid appreciation of the images of things, as these 
images exist in other minds, and a vigorous perception of the 
various shades of resemblance which obtain among them. 
There is a large amount of analogical power exhibited ; but 
that basis of truth which correct observation can alone furnish, 
and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which 
the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regu- 
lated and governed, are wanting, in what, ina mind of fine 
general texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraor- 
dinary degree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid 
work, — full of images transferred, not from the scientific 
field, but from the field of scientific mind, and charged with 
glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of 
fancy ; which, were they to be used as mere counters in some 
light literary game of story-telling or character-sketching, 
would be in no respect out of place, but which, when passed 
current as the proper coin of philosophic argument, are really 
frauds on the popular understanding. There are, however, 
not a few instances in the ‘ Vestiges” and its ** Sequel,” in 
which that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather 
enhances than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting 
to the controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to 
grapple ; that yet, through the existence of a certain super- 
stition in the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true 
whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old 
superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, 
are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of 
difficulty, the following passage, in which the author of the 


work cashiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a 
24 * 


282 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


mere animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears 
the name of natural law,* furnishes us with a remarkable in 
stance. 

“« Admitting,” he remarks, ‘ that we see not now any such 





* We are supplied with a curious example of that ever-return- 
ing cycle of speculation in which the human mind operates, by 
not ouly the introduction of the principle of Epicurus into the 
“Vestiges,” but also by the unconscious employment of even 
his very arguments, slightly modified by the floating semi-scientific 
notions of the time. The following passages, taken, the one from 
the modern work, the other from Fénélon’s life of the old Greek 
philosopher, are not unworthy of being studied, as curiously illus- 
trative of the cycle of thought. Epicurus, I must, however, first 
remind the reader, in the words of his biographer, “supposed 
that men, and all other animals, were originally produced by the 
ground. According to him, the prin itive earth was fat and nitrous ; 
and the sun, gradually warming it, soon covered it with herbage 
and shrubs: there also began to arise on the surface of the ground 
a great number of small tumors like mushrooms, which having 
in a certain time come to maturity, the skin burst, and there came 
forth little animals, which, gradually retiring from the place where 
they were produced, began to respire.’’ And there can be little 
doubt, that had the microscope been a discovery of early Greece, 
the passage here would have told us, not of mushroom-like tumors, | 
but of monads. Save that the element of microscopic fact is awant- 
ing in the one and present in the other, the following are strictly 
parallel lines of argument : — 


“To the natural objection that 
the earth does not now produce 
men, lions, and dogs, Epicurus 
replies that the fecundity of the 
earth is now exhausted. In ad- 
vanced age a woman ceases to 
bear children; a piece of ‘land 
never before cultivated produces 
much more during the few first 
years than it does afterwards; 
and when a forest is once cut 
down, the soil never produces 


‘“‘ In the first place, there is no 
reason to suppose that, though 
life had been imparted by natu- 
ral means, after the first cool- 
ing of the surface to a suitable 
temperament, it would continue 
thereafter to be capable of being 
imparted in like manner. The 
great work of the ypeopling of 
this globe with living species is 
mainly a fact accomplished: the 
highest known species came aa 


IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 283 


fact as the production of new species, we at least know, that 
while such facts were occurring upon earth, there were associ- 
ated phenomena in progress of a character perfectly ordinary 
For example, when the earth received its first fishes, sandstone 
and limestone were forming in the manner exemplified a few 
years ago in the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall; ba- 
saltic columns rose for the future wonder of man, according 
to the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in operation 
before the eyes of our fathers; and hollows in the. igneous 
rocks were filled with crystals, precisely as they could now 





trees equal to those which have 
been rooted up. ‘Those which 
are afterwards planted become 
dwarfish, and are perpetually 
degenerating. We are, however, 
he argues, by no means certain 
but there may be at present rab- 
bits, hares, foxes, bears, and 
other animals, produced by the 
earth in their perfect state. The 
reason why we are backward in 
admitting it is, that it happens 
in retired places, and never falls 
under our view; and, never see- 
ing rats but such as have been 
produced by other rats, we adopt 
the opinion that the earth never 
produced any.” (Fénélon’s Lives 
of the Ancient Philosophers.) 


a crowning effort thousands of 
years ago. The work being thus 
to all appearance finished, we 
are not necessarily to expect that 
the origination of life and of 
species should be conspicuously 
exemplified in the present day. 
We are rather to expect that the 
vital phenomena presented to 
our eyes should mainly, if not 
entirely, be limited to a regular 
and unvarying succession of 
races by the ordinary means of 
generation. This, however, is 
no more an argument against a 
time when phenomena of the 
first kind prevailed, than it 
would be a proof against the 
fact of a mature man having 
once been a growing youth, that 
he i8 now seen growing no 
longer. * * * Secondly, it 
is far from being certain that 
the primitive imparting of life 
and form to inorganic elements 
is not a fact uf our times. (Ves. 
téges of Creation.) 


284 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


be by virtue of electric action, as shown within the last few 
years by Crosse and Becquerel. ‘The seas obeyed the im- 
pulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms, as 
seas of the present day are doing; the trees grew as now, 
by favor of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and 
pining in bad; this while the animals above fishes were yet 
to be created. ‘The movements of the sea, the meteorologi- 
cal agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality 
of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most abun- 
dant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply 
natural order, throughout the whole of the ages which saw 
reptiles enter in their various forms upon the sea and land. 
It was about the time of the first mammals that the forest 
of the Dirt-Bed was sinking in natural ruin amidst the sea 
sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have been doing for 
several centuries upon the coast of England. In short / 
the common operations of the physical world were going on in 
their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see 
governing them; while the supposed extraordinary causes 
were in requisition for the development of the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms. ‘There surely hence arises a strong pre- 
sumption against any such causes. It becomes much more 
likely that the latter phenomena were evolved in the manner 
of law also, and that we only dream of extraordinary causes 
here, as men once dreamt of a special action of Deity m 
every change of wind and the results of each season, merely 
because they did not know the laws by which the events in 
question were evolved.” 

How, let us suppose, would David Hume — the greatest 
thinker of which infidelity can boast—have greeted the 
auxiliary who could have brought him such an argument as a 
contribution tothe cause? ‘* Your ob‘ection, so far as you have 


IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 285 


stated it,” the philosopher might have said, “ amounts simply 
to this: — Creation by direct act is a miracle; whereas all 
that exists is propagated and maintained by natural law. Nat- 
ural laws — to vary the illustration — were in full operation at 
the period when the Author of the Christian religion was, it 
is said, engaged in working his miracles. When, according to 
our opponents, he walked upon the surface of tne sea, Peter, 
through the operation of the natural law of gravitation, was 
sinking into it; when he withered, by a word, the barren 
fig-tree, there were other trees on the Mount thriving in 
conformity with the vegetative laws, under the influence of 
sun and shewer ; when he raised the dead Lazarus, there 
were corpses in the neighboring tombs passing, through the 
natural putrefactive fermentation, into a state of utter de- 
composition. In fine, at the time when he was engaged, 
as Reid and Campbell believe, in working miracles in vio- 
lation of law, the laws of which these were a violation 
actually existed, and were every where actively operative ; 
or, to employ your own words, when the New Testa- 
ment miracles were, it is alleged, in the act of being 
vrought, ‘all the common operations of the physical world 
were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order 
which we still see governing them.’ Such is the portion of 
your statement already made; what next?” ‘It is surely 
very unlikely,” replies the auxiliary, “that in such a com: 
plex mass of phenomena there should have been two totally 
distinct modes of the exercise of the Divine power, — the 
mode by miracle and the mode by law.” “ Unlikely!” re- 
joins the philosopher; ‘on what grounds?” “O, just un- 
likely,” says the auxiliary ; — “ unlikely that God should be at 
once operating on matter through the agency of natural laws, 
of which man knows much, and through the agency of miracu 


286 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


lous acts, of the nature of which man knows nothing. But |} 
have not thought out the subject any further : you have, in the 
statement already made, my entire argument.” ‘‘ Ay,I see,” 
the author of the “‘ Essay an Miracles’ would probably have 
remarked ; * you deem it unlikely that Deity should not only 
work in part, as he has always done, by means of which men 
~~ciever fellows like you and me —think they know a grea. 
deal but that he should also work in part, as he has always 
done, by means of which they know nothing at all. Admirably 
reasoned out! You are, I make no doubt, a sound, zealous 
unbeliever in your private capacity, and your argument may 
have great weight with your own mind, and be, in conse- 
quence, worthy of encouragement in a small way; but allow 
me to suggest that, for the sake 2f the general cause, it 
should be kept out of reach of the enemy. There are in the 
Churches Militant on both sides of the Tweed shrewd com- 
batants, who have nearly as much wit as ourselves.’ I think 
I understand the reference of the author of the ‘“ Vestiges” 
to the dream “ of a special action of Deity in every change 
of wind and the results of each season.” ‘Taken with what 
immediately goes before, it means something considerably 
different from those fancies of the ‘ untutored Indian,” who 
according to the poet, 
‘‘ Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.” 

There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the 
capital of Scotland as by far the most superficial which om 
country has yet seen, that measures mind with a tape-line 
and the callipers, and, albeit not Christian, laudably exem 
plifies, in a loudly expressed regard for science, the Christian 
grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a special Prov- 
idence, who watches over and orders all things, and without 
whose permission there falleth not even a ‘“ sparrow to the 


1N ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 287 


ground,” the apostles of this school set wholly aside, substi- 
tuting, instead, a belief in the indiscriminating operation 
of natural laws; as if, with the broad fact before them that 
even man can work out his will merely by knowing and di- 
recting these laws, the God by whom they were instituted 
should lack either the power or the wisdom to make them 
the pliant ministers of his. It is, I fear, to the distinctive 
tenet in the creed of this hapless school that the author of 
the “ Vestiges” refers. Nor is it in the least surprising, 
that a writer who labors through two carefully written vol- 
umes,* to destroy the existing belief in “ God’s works of 
Creation,” should affect to hold that the belief in his ** works 
of Providence ” had been destroyed already. But faith in a 
special superintendence of Deity is not yet dead: nay, more, 
He who created the human mind took especial care, in its con- 
struction, that, save in a few defective specimens of the race, 
the belief should never die. 

The author of the “ Vestiges ” complains of the illiberality 
with which he has been treated. “It has appeared to vari- 
cus critics,” we find him saying, ‘“ that very sacred princi- 
ples are threatened by a doctrine of universal law. A natu- 
ral origin of life, and a natural basis in organization for the 
operations of the human mind, speak to them of fatalism and 
materialism. And, strange to say, those who every day give 
views of physical cosmogony altogether discrepant in appear- 
ance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for 
suggesting an organic cosmogony in the same way, liable to 
inconsiderate odium. I must firmly protest against this mode 
of meeting speculations regarding nature. The object of my 





* “ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,”’ and “ Explanations, 
being a Sequel to the Vestiges.” 


288 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


book, whatever may be said of the manner in which it is 
treated, is purely scientific. The views which I give of the 
history of organization stand exactly on the same grouna 
upon which the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. 
lam merely endeavoring to read aright another chapter of 
the mystic book which God has placed under the attention 
of his creatures. . . The absence of all liberality in my 
reviewers is striking, and especially so in those whose geologi- 
ca! doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstruction. 
If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown 
upon Newton’s theory of the planetary motions had rushed 
forward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the dawning 
science of Geology, they would have been prefiguring the 
conduct of several of my critics, themselves hardly escaped 
from the rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to joir 
that rabble against a new and equally unfriended stranger, as 
if such were the best means of purchasing impunity for them- 
selves. J trust that a little time will enable the public to pen- 
etrate this policy.” 

Now, there is one very important point to which the author 
of this complaint does not seem to have adverted. The as- 
tronomer founded his belief in the mobility of the earth and 
the immobility of the sun, not on a mere dream-like hy- 
pothesis, founded on nothing, but on a wide and solid base of 
pure induction. Galileo was no mere dreamer ; — he was a 
discoverer of great truths, anda profound reasoner regard- 
ing them: and on his discoveries and his reasonings, com. 
pelled by the inexorable laws of his mental constitution, did 
he baild up certain deductive beliefs, which had no previous 
existence in his mind. His convictions were consequents, 
not antecedents. Such, also, is the character of geological 
discovery and inference, and of the existing belief, — their 


OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS. 2RY 


jot production, — regarding the great antiquity of the globe. 
No geologist worthy of the name began with the belief, and then 
set himself to square geological phenomena with its require- 
ments, It is a deduction, — a result; — not the starting as- 
sumption, or given sum, in a process of calculation, but its ulti- 
mate finding or answer. Clergymen of the orthodox Churches, 
such as the Sumners, Sedgwicks, Bucklands, Conybeares, and 
Pye Smiths of England, or the Chalmerses, Duncans, and Flem- 
ings of our own country, must have come to the study of 
this question of the world’s age with at least no.bias in favor 
of the geological estimate. The old, and, as it has proven, 
erroneous reading of the Mosaic account, was by much too 
general a one early in the present century, not to have exert- 
ed upon them, in their character as ministers of religion, a 
sensible influence of a directly opposite nature. And the fact 
of the complete reversal of their original bias, and of the 
broad unhesitating finding on the subject which they ulti- 
mately substituted instead, serves to intimate to the unin- 
itiated the strength of the evidence to which they submitted. 
There can be nothing more certain than that it is minds of 
the same calibre and class, engaged in the same inductive 
track, that yielded in the first instance to the astronomical 
evidence regarding the earth’s motion, and, in the second, te 
the geological evidence regarding the earth’s age.* 


a am ed kee 


* The chapter in which this passage occurs originally appeared, 
with several of the others, in the Witness newspaper, in a series of 
articles, entitled “Rambles of a Geologist,” and drew forth the 
following letter from a correspondent of the Scottish Press, the 
organ of a powerful and thoroughly respectable section of the old 
Dissenters of Scotland. I prssent it to the reader merely to show, 
that if, according to the arthor of the “ Vestiges,” geologists as~ 
sailed the developmert hyp thesis in the fond hope of ‘‘ purchas- 


95 


290 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


But how very different the nature and history of the de 
velopment hypothesis, and the character of the intellects 
with whom it originated, or by whom it has beer since 


ing impunity for themselves,” they would succeed in securing only 
disappointment for their pains : — 


“(THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH. 
‘“‘ To the Editor of the Scottish Press. 


‘«¢ Str, —I occasionally observe articles in your neighbor and 
contemporary the Wétness, characteristically headed ‘Rambles of 
a Geologist,’ wherein the writer with great zeal once more ‘slays 
the slain’ heresies of the ‘ Vestiges of Creation.’ This writer (of 
the ‘Rambles,’ I mean) nevertheless, and at the same time, an 
r gunces his own tenets to be much of the same sort, as applied t 
mere dead matter, that those of the ‘ Vestiges’ are with regard 
to living organisms. He maintains that the world, during the 
last million of years, has been of itself rising or developing, without 
the interposition of a miracle, from chaos into its present state ; 
and, of course, as it is still, as a world, confessedly far below the 
acme of physical perfection, that it must be just now on its pas- 
sage, self-progressing, towards that point, which terminus it may 
reach in another million of years hence.[!!!] The author of the 
‘ Vestiges,’ as quoted by the author of the ‘Rambles,’ in the last 
number of the Witness, complains that the latter and his allies 
are not at all so liberal to him as, from their present circumstances 
and position, he had a right to expect. He (the author of the 
‘Vestiges’) reminds his opponents that they have themselves only 
lately emerged from the antiquated scriptural notions that our 
world was the direct and almost immediate construction of its 
C~eator,— as much so, in fact, as any of its organized tenants, — 
and that it was then created in a state of physical excellence, the 
highest possible, to render it a suitable habitation for these ten- 
ants, and all this only about six or seven thousand years ago, 
~to the new light of their present physico-Lamarckian views; 
and he asks, and certainly not without reason, why should these 
men, 80 circumstanced, be so anxious to stop him in his attempt 
to move one step further forward in the very direction they them. 
selves have made the last move ?— that is, in his endeavor tu ex- 


OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS. 291 


adopted! In the first place, it existed as a wild dream ere 
Geology had any being as a science. It was an antecedent, 
not a consequent, —a starting assumption, not a result. No 


tend their own principles of self-development from mere matter 
to living creatures. Now, Sir, I confess myself to be one of those 
(and possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted) 
who not only cannot see any great difference between merely physi- 
eal and organic devolopment,{! !] but who would be inclined to allow 
the latter, absurd as it is, the advantage in point of likelihood.[!!!] 
The author of the ‘ Rambles,’ however, in the face of this, assures 
us that Ais views of physical self-development and long chronology 
belong to the inductive sciences. Now, I could at this stage of 
his rambles have wished very much that, instead of merely say- 
img so, he had given his demonstration. He refers, indeed, to 
several great men, who, he says, are of his opinion. Most that 
these men have written on the question at issue I have seen, but 
it appeared far from demonstrative, and some of them, I know, 
had not fully made up their mind on the point.[{!!!] Perhaps the 
author of the ‘Rambles’ could favor us with the inductive pro- 
cess that converted himself; and, as the attainment of truth, and 
not victory, is my object, I promise either to acquiesce in or ration- 
ally refute it.[?] Till then I hold by my antiquated tenets, that 
our world, nay, the whole material universe, was created about 
six or seven thousand years ago, and that in a state of physical 
excellence of which we have in our present fallen world only the 
‘vestiges of creation.’ I conclude by mentioning that this view 
I have held now for nearly thirty years, and, amidst all the vicissi- 
tudes of the philosophical world during that period, I have nevei 
seen cause to change it. Of course, with this view I was, during 
the interval referred to, a constant opponent of the once famous, 
though now exploded, nebular hypothesis of La Place; and I yet 
expect to see physical development and long chronology wither also 
on this earth, now that THEIR Root (the said hypothesis) has been 
eradicated from the sxy.[!!!]—I am, Sir, your most obedient ser- 
vant, 
‘“‘ PHILALETHES.” 

I am afraid there is little hope of converting a man who has 
held so stoutly by his notions “for nearly thirty years;” especial- 
ty as, during that period, he has been acquainting himself with 


292 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS. 


one will contend that Maillet was a geologist. Geo.ogy hus 
no place among the sciences in the age in which he lived, 
and even no name. And yet there is a translation of his 





what writers such as Drs. Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith 
have written on the other side. But for the demonstration which 
he asks, as J have conducted it, I beg leave to refer him to the 
seventeenth chapter of my little work, ‘First Impressions of 
England and its People.” I am, however, inclined to suspect 
that he is one of a class whose objections are destined to be re- 
moved rather by the operation of the laws of matter than of 
those of mind. For it is a comfortable consideration, that in this 
controversy the geologists Aave the laws of matter on their side ; — 
‘‘the stars in their courses fight against Sisera.”’ Their opponents 
now, like the opponents of the astronomer in the ages gone by, are, 
in most instances, men who have been studying the matter “for 
nearly thirty years.” When they study it for a few years longer 
they disappear; and the men of the same cast and calibre who suc- 
ceed them are exactly the men who throw themselves most con- 
fidently into the arms of the enemy, and look down upon their poor 
silent predecessors with the loftiest commiseration. It is, however, 
not uninstructive to remark how thoroughly, in some instances, 
the weaker friends and the wilier enemies of Revelation are at one 
in their conclusions respecting natural phenomena. The corre- 
spondent of the Scottish Press merely regards the views of the author 
of the “ Vestiges”” as possessing ‘the advantage, in point of likeli- 
hood,” over those of the geologists his antagonists: his ally the 
Dean of York goes greatly further, and stands up as stoutly for'the 
transmutation of species as Lamarck himself. Descanting, in his 
New System of Geology, on the various forms of trilobites, ammo- 
nites belemnites, &c. Dean Cockburn says, — 

These creatures appear to have possessed the power of secreting 
from the stone beneath them a limy covering for their backs, and 
perhaps, fed partly on the same solid material. Supposing, now 
that the first trilobites were destroyed by the Llandeilo Slates, 
some spawn of these creatures would arise above these flags, and, 
after a time, would be warmed into existence. These molluscs, [!!] 
then, naving a better material from which to extract their food 
and covering, would probably expand in a slightly different form, 
and with a more extensive mantle than whit belonged to the 


OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS. 293 


Telliamed now lying before me, bearing date 1750, in which 
{ find very nearly the same account given of the origin of 


parent species. The same would be still more the case with a new 
generation, fed upon a new deposit from some deeper volcano, such 
as the Caradoc or Wenlock Limestone, in which lime more and more 
predominates. Now, if any one will examine the various prints of 
trilobites in Sir R. Murchison’s valuable work, he will find but very 
trifling differences in any of them, [!!] and those aifferences only in 
the stony covering of their backs. I knew two brothers once 
much alike: the one became a curate with a large family; the 
other a London alderman. If the skins of these two pachydermata 
had been preserved in a fossil state, there would have been less 
resemblance between them than between an Asaphus tyrannus and 
an Asaphus caudatus. * * * A careful and laborious investi- 
gation has discovered, as in the trilobites, a difference in the am- 
monites of different strata; but such differences, as in the former 
case, exist only in the form of the external shell, and may be ex- 
plained in the same manner. [!!] * * * As to the scaphites, 
baculites, belemnites, and all the other ites which learned ingenu- 
ity has so named, you find them in various strata the same in ali 
important particulars, but also differing slightly in their outward 
coverings, as might be expected from the different eircumstances 
in which each variety was placed. [!!] The sheep in the warm val- 
leys of Andalusia have a fine covering like to hair; but remove 
them to a northern climate, and in a few generations the back is 
covered with shaggy wool. The animal is the same, — the vovering 
only is changed. * * * The learned have classed those shells 
under the names of terebratula, orthis, atrypa, pecten, &c. They 
are all much alike. [!!!] It requires an experienced eye to distin- 
guish them one from another: what little differences have been 
pointed out may readily be ascribed, as before, to difference of 
situation.” [!!!] 

The author of the “ Vestiges,” with this, the fundamental por- 
tion of his case, granted to him by the Dean, will have exceedingly 
httle difficulty in making out the rest for himself. The passage is, 
however, not without its value, as illustrative of the darkness, in 
matters of physical science, “‘even darkness which may be felt,”’ 
that is suffered to linger, in this the most scientific of ages, in the 
Church of Buckland, Sedgwick, and Conybeare. 


25 * 


294 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 


animals and plants as that in the “ Vestiges,” and in which 
the sea is described as that great and fruitful womb of na- 
ture in which organization and life first began La narck, 
at the time when Maillet wrote, was a boy in his sixth 
year. He became, comparatively early in life, a skilful bota- 
nist and conchologist; but not until turned of fifty did he 
se‘ himself to study general zoology; and his greater work 
on the invertebrate animals, on which his fame as a naturalist 
chiefly rests, did not begin to appear — for it was published 
serially — until the year 1815. But his development hypothe- 
sis, identical with that of the “ Vestiges,” was given t' ‘ie 
world long before, — in 1802 ; at a time when it had not been 
ascertained that there existed placoids during the Silurian 
period, or ganoids during the Old Red Sandstone period, or 
enaliosaurs during the Oolitic period; and when, though 
Smith had constructed his “Tabular View of the British 
Strata,” his map had not yet appeared, and there was little 
more known regarding the laws of superposition among the 
stratified rocks than was to be found in the writings of 
Werner. And if the presumption be strong, in the circum- 
stances, that Lamarck originated his development hypothe- 
sis ere he became in any very great degree skilful as a zoolo- 
gist, it is no mere presumption, but a demonstrable truth, 
that he originated it ere he became a geologist; for a geolo- 
gist he never became. In common with Maillet and Buffon, 
he held by Leibnitz’s theory of a universal ocean; and such, 
‘as we have already seen, was his ignorance of fossils, that 
he erected dermal fragments of the Russian Asterolepis into 
a new genus of Polyparia, —an error into which the merest 
tyro in paleontology could not now fall. Such, in relation 
to these sciences, was the man who perfected the dream of 
development. Nor has the most distinguished of its continen 


OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS. 295 


tal assertors now living,— Professor Oken, — any higher 
claim to be regarded as a disciple of the inductive school of 
Geology than Lamarck. In the preface to the recently pub- 
lished translation of his ‘‘ Physio-Philosophy,” we find the 
following curious confession : — “I wrote the first edition of 
1810 in a kind of inspiration, and on that account it was 
not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be. Now, 
though this may appear to have been amended in the second and 
third edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely 
attain the object held in view. The book has therefore re- 
mained essentially the same as regards its fundamental prin- 
ciples. It is only the empirical arrangement into series of 
plants and animals that has been modified from time to time, 
in accordance with the scientific elevation of their several de- 
partments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations 
have increased, and rendered some other position of the objects 
a matter of necessity.” An interesting piece of evidence 
this ; but certainly rather simple as a confession. It will be 
found that while whatever gives value to the ‘* Physio-Philoso- 
phy” of the German Professor (a work which, if divested of 
all the inspired bits, would be really a good one) was acquired 
either before or since its first appearance in the ordinary way, 
its development hypothesis came direct from the god. Fur- 
ther, as I have already had occasion to state, Oken holds, hae 
Lamarck and Maillet, by the universal ocean of Leibnitz ; he 
holds, also, that the globe is a vast crystal, just a little flawed 
in the facets; and that the three granitic components — 
quartz, feldspa:, and mica —are simply the hail-drops of 
heavy stone showers that shot athwart the origifial ocean, and 
accumulated into rock at the bottom, as snow or hail shoots 
athwart the upper atmosphere, and accumulates, in the form 
of ice on the summits of high hills, or in the arctic or antare: 


296 APPEAL FROM SCIENCE 


tic regions. Such, in the present day, are the geclogical no 
tions of Oken! They were doubtless all promulgated in what 
is modestly enough termed “a kind of inspiration;” and 
there are few now so ignorant of Geology as not to know that 
the possessing agent in the case -— for inspiration is not quite 
the proper word— must have been at least of kin to that 
ingenious personage who volunteered of old to be a lying 
spirit in the mouths of the four hundred prophets. And the 
we.l-known fact, that the most popular contemporary ex- 
pounder of Oken’s hypothesis — the author of the “ Vestiges” 
— has in every edition of his work been correcting, modify- 
ing, or altogether withdrawing his statements regarding both 
geological and zoological phenomena, and that his gradual 
development as a geologist and zoologist, from the sufficiently 
low type of acquirement to which his first edition bore witness, 
may be traced, in consequence, with a distinctness and cer. 
tainty which we in vain seek in the cases of presumed devel- 
opment which he would so fain establish, —has in its bearing 
exactly the same effect. His development hypothesis was 
complete at a time when his geology and zoology were rudi- 
mental and imperfect. Give me your facts, said the French- 
man, that I may accommodate them to my theory. And no one 
can look at the progress of the Lamarckian hypothesis, with 
reference to the dates whien, and the men by whom, it was pro- 
mulgated, without recognizing is *’ one of perbaps the most 
striking embodiments of the Frenchman’s principle which the 
world ever saw. It is not the illiberal religionist that rejects 
and casts it off,— it is the inductive philosopher. Science 
addresses its assertors in the language of the possessed to the 
sons of Sceva the Jew ;— “ The astronomer I know, and the 
geolog st I know; but who are ye?” 

One of the strangest passages in the ‘‘Sequel to tha 


TO THE WANT OF IT. 297 


Vestizes,” 


s that in which its author carries his apyeal ‘rom 
the tribunal of science to “‘ another tribunal,” indicated but 
not named, before which “ this new philosophy ” [remarkable 
chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] “is to be truly 
and righteously judged.” ‘The principle is obvious, on which, 
were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though 
they saw the mischievous character and tendency of his con- 
clusions, to disprove them scientifically, he might appeal from 
theology to science: ‘it is with scientific truth,” he might 
urge, “* not with moral consequences, that I have aught to do.” 
But on what allowable principle, professing, as he does, to 
found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from science 
to the want of it? “ After discussing,” he says, ** the whole 
arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may be 
hardly necessary to advert to the objection arising from the 
mere fact, that nearly all the scientific men are opposed to the 
‘heory of the ‘ Vestiges.’ As this objection, however, is like- 
'y to be of some avail with many minds, it ought not to be 
entirely passed over. If I did not think there were reasons, 
independent of judgment, for the scientific class coming sa 
generally to this conclusion, [ might feel the more embar- 
rassed in presenting myself in direct opposition to so many men 
possessing talents and information. As the case really stands 
the ability of this class to give at the present a true response 
upon such a subject appears extremely challengeable. It 1s 
no discredit to them that they are, almost without exception, 
engaged each in his own little department of science, and 
able to give little or no attention to other parts of that vast 
field. From year t) year, and from age to age, we see them 
at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advanc- 
ing many important interests, but at the same time doing 
little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. 


998 APPEAL FROM SCIENCE 


Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever 
minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies ; all beyond 
is regarded with suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, 
that philosophy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise 
its votaries abave the common ideas of their time. There 
ean therefore be nothing more conclusive against our hy- 
pothesis in the disfavor of the scientific class, than in that of 
any other section of educated men.” 

This is surely a very strange statement. Waiving alto- 
gether the general fact, that great original discoverers in any 
department of knowledge are never men of one science or 
one faculty, but possess, on the contrary, breadth of mind 
and multiplicity of acquirement ; — waiving, too, the particu- 
lar fact, that the more distinguished original discoverers of 
the present day rank among at once its most philosophic, 
most elegant, and most extensively informed writers ; — grant: 
ing, for the argument’s sake, that our scientific men are men 
of narrow acquirement, and “exclusively engaged, each in 
his own little departraent of science ; ” —it is surely rational 
to hold, notwithstanding, that in at least these little depart 
ments they have a better right to be heard than any other 
class of persons whatever. We must surely not refuse to the 
man of science what we at once grant to the common me- 
chanic. A cotton-weaver or calico-printer may be a very 
narrow man, “ exclusively engaged in his own little depart- 
ment ;” and yet certain it is that, in a question of cotton-weav 
ing or calico-printing, his evidence is justly deemed more 
conclusive in courts or law than that of any other man, 
however much his sup2rior in general breadth and intelli- 
gence. And had the author of the ‘ Vestiges ”? founded his 
hypothesis on certain facts pertaining to the arts of cotton- 
weaving and calico-printing, the cotton-weaver and calico 


TO THE WANT DOF IT. 299 


printe: would have an indisputable right to be heard on the 
question of their general correctness. Are we to regard the 
case as different because it is on facts pertaining to science, 
not to cotton-weaving or calico-printing, that he professes te 
found? His hypothesis, unless supported by scientific evi- 
dence, is a mere dream,;—a fiction as baseless and wild as 
any in the ‘‘ Fairy Tales” or the “ Arabian Nights.” And, 
fully sensible of the fact, he calls in as witnesses the physical 
sciences, and professes to take down their evidence. He 
calls inte court Astronomy, Geology, Phytology, and Zoology. 
“ Hold!” exclaims the astronomer, as the examination goes 
on; ‘¢ you are taking the evidence of my special science most 
unfairly ; I challenge a right of cross-examining the witness.” 
‘“‘ Hold !” cries the geologist ; “ you are putting my science tc 
the question, and extorting from it, in its agony, a whole 
series of fictions: I claim the right of examining it fairly and 
softly, and getting from it just the sober truth, and nothing 
more.” And the phytologist and zoologist urge exactly sim- 
lar calms. ‘* No, gentlemen,” replies the author of the 
‘« Vestiges,” “‘ you are narrow men, confined each of you to 
his own little department, and so I will not permit you to 
cross-examine the witnesses.” ‘ What!” rejoin the men of 
science, “ not permit us to examine our own witnesses ! — re- 
fuse to us what you would at once concede to the cotton. 
weaver or the calico-printer, were the question one of cottone 
weaving or of calico-printing! We are surely not much 
narrower men than the man of cotton or the man of calico 
It is but in our own little departments that we ask to be heard.” 
“ But you shall not be heard, gentlemen,” says the author of 
the ** Vestiges ;” ‘at all events, I shall not care one farthing 
for anything you say. For observe, gentlemen, my hypothe. 
ais is nothing without the evidence of you: sciences; and you 


300 HUME VERSUS 


all unite, I sez, in taking that evidence from me- and 60 | 
confidently raise my appeal in this matter to people who 
know nothing about either you or your sciences. It must be 
before another tribunal that the new philosophy is to be truly 
and righteously judged.” Alas! what can this mean? or 
where are we to seek for that tribunal of last resort to which 
‘his ingenious man refers with such confidence the consider- 
ation of his case? Can it mean, that he appeals from the 
only class of persons qualified to judge of his facts, to a class 
ignorant of these, but disposed by habits of previous scepti- 
cism to acquiesce in his conclusions, and take his premises for 
granted ;—that he appeals from astronomers and geologists 
to low-minded materialists and shallow phrenologers, — from 
phytologists and zoologists to mesmerists and phreno-mesmer. 
ists ? 

I remember being much struck, several years ago, by a re- 
mark dropped in conversation by the late Rev. Mr. Stewart 
of Cromarty, one of the most original-minded men I ever 
knew. ‘In reading in my Greek New Testament this morn- 
ing,” he said, ‘I was curiously impressed by a thought 
which, simple as it may seem, never occurred to me before. 
The portion which I perused was in the First Epistle of Peter ; 
and as I passed from the thinking of the passage to the lan- 
guage in which it is expressed,‘ This Greek of the un 
taught Galilean fisherman,’ —I said, ‘so admired by scholars 
and critics for its unaffected dignity and force, was not ac- 
quired, as that of Paul may have been, in the ordinary way, 
but formed a portion of the Pentecostal gift! Here, then, 
immediately under my eye, on these pages, are there em- 
bodied, not, as in many cther parts of the Scriptures, the 
mere details of a miracle, bit the direct results of a miracle. 
How strange ! Had the old tables of stone been placed be- 


* THE STONY SCIENCE. ‘ 301 


fore me, with what an awe-struck feeling would I have looked 
on the characters traced upon them by God’s own finger { 
How is it that I have failed to remember that, in the language 
of these Epistles, miraculously impressed by the Divine 
power upon the mind, I possessed as significant and suggest. 
ive a relic as that which the inscription miraculously impressed 
by the Divine power upon the stone could possibly have fur- 
nished?” It was a striking thought; and in the course of 
our walk, which led us over richly fossiliferous beds of the 
Old Red Sandstone, to a deposit of the Eathie Lias, largely 
charged with the characteristic remains of that formation, | 
ventured to connect it with another. “In either case,”’ I re- 
marked, as we seated ourselves beside a sea-cliff, sculptured 
over with the impressions of extinct plants and shells, ‘* your 
relics, whether of the Pentecostal Greek or of the characters 
inscribed on the old tables of stone, could address themselves 
to but previously existing belief. The sceptic would see in 
the Sinaitic characters, were they placed before him, merely 
the work of an ordinary tool ; and in the Greck of Peter and 
John, a well-known language, eequired, he would hold, in 
the common way. But what say you to the relics that stand 
out in such bold relief from the vocks beside us, in their char- 
acter as the results of miracle? The perished tribes and 
races which they represent all began to exist. There is no 
truth which science can more conclusively demonstrate than 
that they had all a beginning. The infidel who, in this late 
age of the world, would attempt falling back on the fiction of 
an ‘ infinite series,’ would be laughed to scorn. They all be- 
gan to be. But how? No true geologist holds by the devel- 
opment hypothesis ;— it has been resigned to sciolists and 
smatterers ;— and there is but one other alternative. They 
began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evi- 


26 


302 HUME VERSUS THE STONY SCIENCE. 


dence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either tc 
the belief in miracle, or to the belief n something else in- 
finitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported 
by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at 
length answered by the severe truths of the stony science. 
He was not, according to Job, ‘in league w’th the stones of 
the field,’ and they have risen in irresistible warfare agains’ 
him in the Creator’s behalf.” 


FINAL CAUSES. 36 


FINAI. CAUSES. —THEIR BEARING ON GEOLOGIC 
HISTORY. 


CONCLUSION. 


‘Narurat History has a principle on which to reason,” 
says Cuvier, “‘ which is peculiar to it, and which it employs 
advantageously on many occasions: it is that of the con: 
ditions of existence, commonly termed final causes.” 

In Geology, which is Natural History extended over ali 
ages, this principle has a still wider scope, — embracing not 
merely the characteristics and conditions of the beings which 
now exist, but of all, so far as we can learn regarding them, 
which have ever existed, and involving the consideration 
of not merely their peculiarities as races placed before us 
without relation to time, but also of the history of their rise, 
increase, decline, and extinction. In studying the biography, 
if I may so express myself, of an individual animal, we have 
to acquaint ourselves with the circumstances in which nature 
has placed it, — its adaptation to these, both in structure and 
instinct, — the points of resemblance which it presents to the 
‘ndividuals of other races and families, and the laws which 
determine its terms of development, vigoro' s existence, and 
decay. And all Natural History, when restricted to the pass 


304 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


ing now of the world’s annals, is simply a congeries of biog 
raphies. It is when we extend our view into the geological 
field that it passes from biography into histury proper, and 
that we have to rise from the consideration of the birth and 
death of individuals, which, in all mere biographies, form the 
great terminal ev2nts that constitute beginning and end, to a 
survey of the birth and death of races, and the elevation or 
degradation of dynasties and sub-kingJoms. 

We learn from human history that nations are as certainly 
mortal as men. ‘They enjoy a greatly longer term of exist- 
ence, but they die at last: Rollin’s History of Ancient Na- 
tions is a history of the dead. And we are taught by geologi- 
cal history, in like manner, that species are as mortal as indi- 
viduals and nations, and that even genera and families become 
extinct. There is no man upon earth at the present moment 
whose age greatly exceeds an hundred years ;— there is no 
nation now upon earth (if we perhaps except the long-lives 
Chinese) that also flourished three thousand years ago ;—- 
there is no species now living upon earth that dates beyond the 
times of the Tertiary deposits. All bear the stamp of death, 
— individuals, —- nations, — species ; and we may scarce less 
safely predicate, looking upon the past, that it is appointed for 
nations and species to die, than that it “‘is appointed for man 
once to die.” Even our own species, as now constituted, — 
with instincts that conform to the original injunction, ** increase 
and multiply,” and that, in consequence, “‘ marry and are given 
in marriage,” — shall one day cease to exist: a fact not less 
in accordance with beliefs inseparable from the faith of the 
Christian, than with the widely-founded experience of the 
geologist. Now, it is scarce possible for the human mind to 
hecome acqua nted with the fact, that at certain periods species 
began to exist and then, after the lapse of untold ages, ceased 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 305 


to be, without inquiring whether, from the “ conditions of ex: 
istence, commonly termed final causes,’ we cannot deduce 
a reason for their rise or decline, or why their term of being 
should have been included rather in one certain period of time 
than another. The same faculty which finds employment in 
racing to their causes the rise and fall of nations, and which 
it is the merit of the philosophic historian judiciously to exer 
vise, will to a certainty seek employment in this department 
of history a'so; and that there will be an appetency for such 
speculations in the public mind, we: may infer from the suc- 
cess, as a literary undertaking, of the “ Vestiges of Creation,” 
—a work that bears the same sort of relation, in this special 
field to sober inquiry, founded on the true conditions of things, 
that the legends of the old chroniclers bore to authentic his- 
tory. The progressive state of geologic science has hitherto 
militated against the formation of theory of the soberer char- 
acter. Its facts— still merely in the forming —are neces- 
sarily imperfect in their classification, and limited in their 
amount; and thus the essential data continues incomplete. 
Besides, the men best acquainted with the basis of fact which 
already exists, have quite enough to engage them in adding 
to it. But there are limits to the field of paleontological dis- 
covery, in its relation to what may be termed the chronology 
of organized existence, which, judging from the progress of 
the science in the past, may be well nigh reached in favored 
localities, such as the British islands, in about a quarter of a 
century from the present time ; and then, I doubt not, geologi- 
cal history, in legitimate conformity with the laws of mind, 
and from the existence of the pregnant principle peculiar, ac 
cording to Cuvier, to that science of which Geology is 
simply an extension, will assume a very extraordinary form 
We cannot yet aspire “to the height of this great argument: ” 


26 * 


306 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


our foundations are in parts still unconsolidate. and incom 
plete, and unfitted to sustain the perfect superstructure which 
shall one day assuredly rise upon them; but from the little 
which we can now see, “as if in a glass darkly,” enough ap- 


pears from which to 
«¢ Assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men.” 

The history of the four great monarchies of the world was 
typified, in the prophetic dream of the ancient Babylonish 
king, by a colossal image, “ terrible in its form and bright- 
ness,” of which the “head was pure gold,” the “ breast and 
arms of silver,” the ‘ belly and thighs of brass,” and the legs 
and feet “of iron, and of iron mingled with clay.” The 
vision in which it formed the central object was appropriately 
that of a puissant monarch; and the image itself typified the 
merely human monarchies of the earth. It would require a 
widely different figure to symbolize the great monarchies 
of creation. And yet Revelation does furnish such a figure. 
It is that which was witnessed by the captive prophet beside 
“the river Chebar,” when “the heavens were opened, and 
he saw visions of God.” In that chariot of Deity, glowing 
in fire and amber, with its complex wheels ‘‘so high that 
they were dreadful,” set round about with eyes, there were 
living creatures, of whose four faces three were brute and 
one human; and high over all sat the Son of Man. It would 
almost seem as if, in this sublime vision, —in which, with 
features distinct enough to impress the imagination, there 
mingle the elements of an awful incomprehensibility, and 
which even the genius of Raffaelle has failed adequately to 
portray, — the history of all the past and of all the future had 
been symbolized. In the order of Providence intimated in the 
geologic record, the brute faces, as in the vision, outnumber 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 307 


the human ; — the buman dynasty is one, and the dynasties 
of the inferior animals are three ; and yet who can doubt that 
they all equally compose parts of a well-ordered and _ perfect 
whole, as the four faces formed but one cherubim; that they 
have been moving onward to a definite goal, in the unity of 
one grand harmonious design, — now “lifted up high” over 
the comprehension of earth, —now let dewn to its humble 
level ; and that the Creator of all has been ever seated over 
them on the throne of his providence, — a “ likeness in the 
appearance ‘of a man,’ — embodying the perfection of his 
nature in his workings, and determining the end from the be- 
ginning ? 

There is geologic evidence, as has been shown, that in the 
course of creation the higher orders succeeded the lower. 
We have no gocd reason to believe that the mollusc and crus- 
tacean preceded the fish, seeing that discovery, in its slow 
course, has already traced the vertebrata in the ichthyic form, 
down to deposits which only a few years ago were regarded 
as representatives of the first beginnings of organized exist- 
ence on our planet, and that it has at the same time failed to 
add a lower system to that in which their remains occur. 
But the fish seems most certainly to have preceded the rep- 
tile and the bird; the reptile and the bird to have preceded 
the mammiferous quadruped ; and the mammiferous quadru- 
ped to have preceded man,—rational, accountable man, 
whom God created in his own image, — the much-loved Ben- 
jamin of the family, — last-born of all creatures. It is of itself 
an extraordinary fact, without reference to other considera 
tions, that the order adopted by Cuvier, in nis animal kingdom 
as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals, 
when marshalled according to their rank and standing, natu. 
rally range should be also that in which they occur in order of 


308 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


time. The brain which bears an average proportion to the 
spinal cord of not more than two to one, came first, — it is the 
brain of the fish; that which bears to the spinal cord an av- 
erage proportion of two and a half to one succeeded it,— it 
is the brain of the reptile ; then came the brain averaging as 
three to one, — it is that of the bird ; next in succession came 
the brain that averages as four to one, — it is that of the mam- 
mal; and last of all there appeared a brain that averages as 
twenty-three to one, — reasoning, calculating man had come 
upon the scene. All the facts of geological science are hos- 
tile to the Lamarczian conclusion, that the lower brains were 
developed into the higher. As if with the express intention 
cf preventing so gross a mis-reading of the record, we find, 
in at least two classes of animals, — fishes and reptiles, — the 
higher races placed at the beginning: the slope of the inclined 
plane is laid, if one may so speak, in the reverse way, and, 
instead of rising towards the level of the succeeding class, 
inclines downwards, with at least the effect, if not the design, 
of making the break where they meet exceedingly well 
marked and conspicuous. And yet the record does seem to 
speak of development and progression ; — not, however, in the 
province of organized existence, but in that of ins€nsate 
matter, subject to the purely chemical laws. It is in the style 
and character of the dwelling-place that gradual improvement 
seems to have taken place ;— not in the functions or the rank 
of any class of its inhabitants ; and it is with special reference 
to this gradual improvement in our common mansion-house 
the earth, in its bearing on the “conditions of existence,” 
that not a few of our reasonings regarding the introduction 
and ext'nction of species and genera must proceed. 

That definite per od at which man was introduced upon 
the scene seems to have been specially determined by the 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 309 


conditions of correspondence which the phenomena of his 
habitation had at length come to assume with the predes- 
-uned constitution of his mind. The large reasoning braia 
would have been wholly out of place in the earlier ages. It 
is indubitably the nature of man to base the conclusions 
which regulate all his actions on fixed phenomena , — he rea- 
sons from cause to effect, or from effect to cause ; and when 
placed in circumstances in which, from some lack of the 
necessary basis, he cannot so reason, he becomes a wretched, 
timid, superstitious creatire, greatly more helpless and ab- 
ject than even the inferior animals This unhappy state is 
strikingly exemplified by that deep and peculiar impression 
made on the mind by a severe earthquake, which Hum- 
boldt, from his own experience, so powerfully describes. 
‘This impression,” he says, “is not, in my opinion, the re- 
sult of a recollection of those fearful pictures of devasta- 
tion presented to our imagination by the historical narra- 
tives of the past, but is rather due to the sudden revelatior 
of the delusive nature of the inherent faith by which we had 
clung to a belief in the immobility of the solid parts of the 
earth. We are accustomed from early childhood to draw a 
contrast between the mobility of water and the immobility 
of the soil on which we tread; and this feeling is confirmed 
by the evidence of our senses. When, therefore, we sud- 
denly feel the ground move beneath us, a mysterious force, 
with which we were previously unacquainted, is revealed 
to us as an active disturber of stability. A moment dae- 
stroys the illusion of a whole life; our deceptive faith in the 
repose of nature vanishes; and we feel transported into a 
realm of unknown destructive forces Every sound — the 
faintest motion of the air — arrests our attention, and we no 


-onger trust the ground or which we stand. There is an 


310 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


idea conveyed to the mind, of some universal and unlimited 
danger. We may flee from the crater of a volcano in active 
eruption, or from the dwelling whose destruction is threat- 
ened by the approach of the lava stream; but in an earth- 
quake, direct our flight whithersoever we will, we still fee 
as if we trod upon the very focus of destruction.” Not less 
striking is the testimony of Dr. Tschudi, in his “ Travels in 
Peru,” regarding this singular effect of earthquakes on the 
human mind. ‘No familiarity with the phenomenon can,” 
he remarks, “ blunt the feeling. The inhabitant of Lima, whe 
from childhood has frequently witnessed these convulsions 
of nature, is roused from his sleep by the shock, and rushes 
from his apartment with the cry of ‘Misericordia!’ The 
foreigner from the north of Europe, who knows nothing of 
earthquakes but by description, waits with impatience to feel 
the movements of the earth, and longs to hear with his own 
ear the subterranean sounds, which he has hitherto con- 
sidered fabulous. With levity he treats the apprehen- 
sion of a coming convulsion, and laughs at the fears of the 
natives; but as soon as his wish is gratified, he is terror- 
stricken, and is involuntarily prompted to seek safety in 
flight.” | 

Now, a partially consolidated planet, tempested by fre. 
quent earthquakes of such terrible potency, that those of the 
historic ages would be but mere ripples of the earth’s sur- 
face in comparison, could be no proper home for a creature 
so constituted. The fish or reptile, — animals of a limited 
range of instinct, exceedingly tenacious of life in most of their 
varieties, ov.parous, prolific, and whose young immediately 
oa their zscape from the egg can provide for themselves 
might? enjoy existence in such circumstances, to the full ex- 
tent of their narrow capacities ; and when sudden death fell 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 31) 


upon them,— though their remains, scattered over wide <reas, 
continue to exhibit that distortion of posture incident to vio- 
lent dissolution, which seems to speak of terror and suffering, 
-— we may safely conclude there was but little 1eai suffering 
in the case: they were happy up to a certain point, and un- 
conscious forever after. Fishes and reptiles were the proper 
inhabitants of our planet during the ages of the earth-tem- 
pests ; and when, under the operation of the chemical Jaws, 
these had become less frequent and terrible, the higher 
mammals were introduced. That prolonged ages of these 
tempests did exist, and that they gradually settled down, un 
til the state of things became at length comparatively fixed 
and stable, few geologists will be disposed to deny. The evi- 
dence which supports this special theory of the development 
of our planet in its capabilities as a scene of organized and 
sentient being, seems palpable at every step. Look first at 
these Grauwacke rocks ; and, after marking how in one place 
the strata have been upturned on their edges for miles together, 
and how in another the Plutonic rock has risen molten 
from below, pass on to the Old Red Sandstone, and examine its 
significant platforms of violent death, — its faults, displace- 
ments, and dislocations ; see, next, in the Coal Measures, those 
evidences of sinking and ever-sinking strata, for thousands of 
feet together; mark in the Oolite those vast overlying masses 
of trap, stretching athwart the landscape, far as the eye can 
reach; observe carefully how the signs of convulsion and 
catastrophe gradually lessen as we descend to the times of 
the Tertiary, though even in these ages of the mammiferous 
quadruped the earth must have had its oft-recurring ague 
fits of frightful intensity ; and then, on closing the survey, 
consider how exceedingly partial and unfrequent these earth- 
tempests have become in the recent periods. Yes: we find 


312 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


every where marks of at once progression and identity, — of 
progress made, and yet identity maintained; but it is in 
tne habitation that we find them,— not in the inhabitants 
There is a tract of country in Hindustan that contains 
nearly as many square miles as all Great Britain, cov- 
ered to the depth of hundreds of feet by one vast overflow 
of trap; a track similarly overflown, which exceeds in area 
all England, occurs in Southern Africa. The earth’s sur- 
face is roughened with such, — mottled as thickly by the 
Plutonic masses as the skin of the leopard by its spots. The 
trap district which surrounds our Scottish metropolis, and 
imparts so imposing a character to its scenery, is too inconsid- 
erable to be marked on geological maps of the world, that we 
yet see streaked and speckled with similar memorials, though 
on an immensely vaster scale, of the eruption and overflow 
which took place in the earthquake ages. What could man 
have done on the globe at a time when such outbursts were 
comparatively common occurrences? What could he have 
done where Edinburgh now stands during that overflow of trap 
porphyry of which the Pentland range forms but a fragment, 
or that outburst of greenstone of which but a portion remains 
in the dark ponderous coping of Salisbury Craigs, or when the 
thick floor of rock on which the city stands was broken up, 
like the ice of an arctic sea during a tempest in spring, and laid 
on edge from where it leans against the Castle Hill to beyond 
the quarries at Joppa? The reasoning brain would have been 
wholly at fault in a scene of things in which it could neither 
foresee the exterminating calamity while yet distant, nor con- 
trol it when it had come; and so the reasoning brain was no! 
produced until the scene had undergone a slow but thorough 
process of change, during which, at each progressive stage, !1 
had furnished a platform for higher and still higher .ife. 


ON GEOLOGIC H STORY. 313 


When the conifers could flourish on the land, and fishes 
subsis' in the seas, fishes and cone-bearing plants were cre- 
ated; when the earth became a fit habitat for reptiles and 
birds, reptiles and birds were produced; with the dawn of a 
more stable and mature state of things the sagacious quad: 
ruped was ushered in; and, last of all, when man’s house 
was fully prepared for him,— when the data on which it is 
his nature to reason and calculate had become fixed and 
certain, — the reasoning, calculating brain was moulded by 
the creative finger, and man became a living soul. Such 
seems to be the true reading of the wondrous inscription 
chiselled deep in the rocks. It furnishes us with no clue 
by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of cre 
ation;— these mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, 
and to Him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and 
to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us 
in our presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone 
bearing wood, —a fish’s skull or tooth,—the vertebra of a 
reptile, — the humerus of a bird, — the jaw of a quadruped, 
—all, any of these things, weak and insignificant as they 
may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong for us and our 
theory : the puny fragment, in the grasp of truth, forms as 
irresistible a weapon as the dry bone did in that of Samson 
of old; and our slaughtered sophisms lie piled up, “ heaps 
upon heaps,” before it. 

There is no geological fact nor revealed doctrine with 
which this special scheme of development does not agree. To 
every truth, too, really such, from which the antagonist 
scheme derives its shadowy analogies, it leaves its full value. 
It has no quarrel with the facts of even the “ Vestiges,” in 
their character as realities. There is certainly something very 


extraordinary in that foetal progress of the human brain on 
27 


314 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


which the assertors of the development hypothesis have founded 
so much. Nature, in constructing this curious organ, first lays 
down a grooved cord, as the carpenter lays down the keel of 
his vessel; and on this narrow base the perfect brain, as 
month after month passes by, is gradually built up, like the 
vessel from the keel. First it grows up into a brain closely 
resembling that of a fish; a few additions more convert it 
into a brain undistinguishable from that of a reptile; a few 
additions more impart to it the perfect appearance of the 
brain of a bird; it then developes into a brain excvedingly 
like that of a mammiferous quadruped ; and, finally, expand- 
ing atop, and spreading out its deeply corrugated lobes, till 
they project widely over the base, it assumes its unique char- 
acter as a human brain. Radically such from the first, it 
passes towards its full development, through all the inferior 
forms, from that of the fish upwards, — thus comprising, dur: 
ing its foetal progress, an epitome of geologic history, as if 
each man were in himself, not the microcosm of the old fan- 
ciful philosopher, but something greatly more wonderful, — 
a compendium of all animated nature, and of kin to every 
creature that lives. Hence the remark, that man is the 
sum total of all animals, —“ the animal equivalent,” says 
Oken, “ to the whole animal kingdom.” We are perhaps too 
“much in the habit of setting aside real facts, when they have 
been first seized upon by the infidel, and appropriated to the 
purposes of unbelief, as if they had suffered contamination in 
his hands. We forget, like the brother “ weak in the faith,” 
instanced by the Apostle, that they are in themselves “ crea- 
tures of God ;”’ and too readily reject the lesson which they 
teach, simply because they have been offered in sacrifice to 
wn idol. And this strange fact of the progress of the human 
brain is assuredly a fact none the less worth looking at from the 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 315 


circumstance tha infidelity has looked at it first. On no princi 
ple recognizable n right reason can it be urged in support of 
the development hypothesis; —it is a fact of fatal develop- 
ment, and of that only. But it would be well should it lead 
our metaphysicians to inquire whether they have not been 
rendering their science too insulated and exclusive; and 
whether the mind that works by a brain thus ‘ fearfully and 
wonderfully made,” ought not to be viewed rather in connec: 
tion with all animated nature, especially as we find nature 
exemplified in the various vertebral forms, than as a thing 
fundamentally abstract and distinct. The brain built up of 
all the types of brain, may be the organ of a mind com 
pounded, if 1 may so express myself, of all the varieties of 
mind. It would be perhaps over fanciful to urge that it is the 
creature who has made himself free of all the elements, 
whose brain has been thus in succession that of all their proper 
denizens; and that there is no animal instinct, the function of 
which cannot be illustrated by some art mastered by man: but 
there can be nothing over fanciful in the suggestion, founded 
on this fact of foetal development, that possibly some of the 
more obscure signs impressed upon the human character may 
be best read through the spectacles of physical science. The 
successive phases of the foetal brain give at least fair warning 
that, in tracing to its first principles the moral and intellectual 
nature of man, what is properly his “ natural history ” 
should not be overlooked. Oken, after describing the human 
creature in one passage as “ equivalent to the whole animal 
kingdom,” designates him in another as “ God wholly mani- 
fested,” and as “‘ God become man ; ” —a style of expression 
at which the English reader may start, as that of the “big 
mouth speaking blasphemy,” but which has become exceed- 
ingly common among the .ttionalists of the Continent. The 


816 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


irreverent naturalist ought surely to have remembered, that 
the sum total of all the animals cannot be different in its 
nature from the various sums of which it is an aggregate, 
~—seeing that no summation ever differs in quality from 
the items summed up, which compose it, —and that, though 
it may amount in this case to man the animal, — to man, as 
he may be weighed, and measured, and subjected to the 
dissecting knife, — it cannot possibly amount toGod. Is God 
merely a sum total of birds and beasts, reptiles and fishes ; — 
a mere Egyptian deity, composed of fantastic hieroglyphics 
derived from the forms of the brute creation? The impieties 
of the transcendentalist may, however, serve to illustrate that 
mode of seizing on terms which, as the most sacred in the 
message of revelation, have been long coupled in the popular 
mind with saving truths, and forcibly compelling them to bear 
some visionary and illusive meaning, wholly foreign to that 
with which they were criginally invested, which has become 
so remarkable a part of the policy of modern infidelity. Ra- 
‘ionalism has learned to sacrifice to Deity with a certain 
neasure of conformity to the required pattern; put it is a 
conformity in appearance only, not in reality: the sacri- 
fice always resembles that of Prometheus of old, who pre- 
sented to Jupiter what, though it seemed to be an ox witn- 
out blemish, was merely an ox-skin stuffed full of bones and 
garbage. 

There is another very remarkable class of facts in geological 
history, which appear to fall as legitimately within the scope cf 
argument founded on final causes, as those which bear on the 
appearance of man at his proper era. The period of the 
mammiferous quadrupeds seems, like the succeeding human 
period, to have been determined, as I have said, by the earth’s 
fitness at the time as a place of habitation for creatures 80 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 31 


formed. And the bulk to which, in the more extreme cases, 
they attained, appears to have been regulated, as in the ngh- 
er mammals now, with reference to the force of gravity at 
the earth’s surface. The Megatherium and the Mastadon, the 
Dinotherium and the extinct elephant, increased in bulk, in 
obedience to the laws of the specific constitution imparted te 
them at their creation; and these laws bore reference, in turn, 
to another law, — that law of gravity which determines that no 
creature which moves in air and treads the surface of the 
enrth shou.d exceed a certain weight or size. To very neat 
the limits assigned by this law some of the ancient quadru- 
peds arose. It is even doubtful whether the Dinotherium, the 
most gigantic of mammals, may not have been, like the exist. 
ing sea-lions and morses, mainly an aquatic quadruped ;—- 
an inference grounded on the circumstance that, in at least 
portions of its framework, it seems to have risen beyond these 
limits. Now, it does not seem wonderful that, with apparent 
reference to the point at which the gravity of bodies at the 
earth’s surface bisects the conditions of texture and mat- 
ter necessary to existence among the sub-aerial vertebrata, the 
reptiles of the Secondary periods should have grown up in 
some of their species and genera to the extreme size. A 
world of frogs, newts, and lizards would have borne stamped 
upon it the impress of a tame and miserable mediocrity, that 
would have harmonized ill with the extent of the earth’s 
capabilities for sipporting life on a large scale. here 
would be 1:0 principle of adaptation or rule of propcrtion 
maintained between an animal kingdom composed of so 
contemptible a group of beings, and either the dynamic laws 
under wnich matter exists on our planet, or the luxuriant vege- 
tation which it bore during the Secondary ages. And such 
was vot the character of the group which composed the 
27 * 


318 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


reptile dynasty. The Iguanodon must have keen quite 
as tall as the elephant, — greatly longer, and, it would 
seem, at least as bulky. The Megalosaurus must have at 
least equalled the rhinoceros ; the Hyleosaurus would have 
outweighed the hippopotamus. And when reptiles that rivalled 
in size our hugest mammals inhabited the land, other reptiles, 
— Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, and Cetiosaurs, — scarce less 
bulky than the cetacea themselves, possessed the sea. Not 
only was the platform of being occupied in all its breadth, but 
also in all its hetght ; and it is according to our simpler and 
more obvious ideas of adaptation — simple and obvious be- 
cause gleaned from the very surface of the universe of life 
— that such should have been the case. But it does appear 
strange, because under the regulation, it would seem, of a 
principle of adaptation more occult, and, if I may so speak, 
more Providential, that no sooner are the huge mammals in- 
troduced as a group, than, with but a few exceptions, the rep- 
tiles appear in greatly diminished proportions. They no long- 
er occupy the platform to its full extent of height. Even in 
tropical countries, in which certain families of mammals still 
attain to the maximum size, the reptiles, if we except the croco- 
dilean family, a few harmless turtles, and the degraded boas 
and pythons, are a small and comparatively unimportant race. 
Nay, the existing giants of the class—the crocodiles and 
boas; — hardly equal in bulk the third-rate reptiles of the ages 
of the Oolite and the Wealden. So far as can be seen, there 
is nc reason deduceable from the nature of things, why the 
country that sustains a mammal bulky as the elephant, 
shculd not also support a reptile huge as the Iguanodon; or 
why the Megalosaurus, Hyleosaurus, and Dicynodon, migh‘ 
not have been cortemporary with the lion, tiger, and rhinoce 
ros. The change which took place in the reptile group im. 


ON GEOLOG C HISTORY. 3] 


inediately on their dethronement at the close of the Second. 
ary period, seems scarce less strange than that sung by Mil- 
fon :— 
“Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed 

In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons, 

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

Thronged numberless ; like that pygmean race 

Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves, 

Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 

Or dreams he sees, while, overhead, the moon 


Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 
Wheels her pale course.” 


But though we cannot assign a cause for this general re 
duction of the reptile class, save simply the will of the all- 
wise Creator, the reason why it should have taken place 
seems easily assignable. It was a bold saying of the old 
philosophic heathen, that ‘* God is the soul of brutes ;” but 
writers on instinct in even our own times have said less 
warrantable things. God does seem to do for many of the 
inferior animals of the lower divisions, which, though devoid 
of brain and vertebral column, are yet skilful chemists and 
accomplished architects and mathematicians, what he en- 
ables man, through the exercise of the reasoning faculty, to 
do for himself; and the ancient philosopher meant no more. 
And in clearing away the giants of the reptile dynasty, when 
their kingdom had passed away, and then re-introducing the 
class as much shrunken in their proportions as restricted in 
their domains, the Creator seems to have been doing for the 
mammals what man, in the character of a ‘ mighty hunter 
before the Lord,” does for himself. There is in nature very 
little of what can be called war. The cities of this country 
cannot be said to be in a state of war, though their cattle- 


$20 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


markets are thronged every week with animals for slaughter, 
and the butcher and fishmonger find their places of business 
thronged with customers. And such, in the main, is the con- 
dition of the animal world ;— it consists of its two classes, — 
auimals of prey, and the animals upon which they prey: its 
wars are simply those of the butcher and fisher, lightened by 
a dash of the enjoyments of the sportsman. 
«‘ The creatures see of flood and field, 
And those that travel on the wind, 


With them no strife can last; they live 
In peace and peace of mind.” 


Generally speaking, the carnivorous mammalia respect one 
another: lion does not war with tiger, nor the leopard con- 
tend with the hyena. But the carnivorous reptiles manifest 
no such respect for the carnivorous mammals. There are 
fierce contests in their native jungles, on the banks of the 
Ganges, between the gavial and the tiger; and in the steam 
ing forests of South America, the boa-constrictor casts his 
terrible coil scarce less readily round the puma than the an- 
telope. A world which, after it had become a home of the 
higher herbivorous and more powerful carnivorous mammals, 
continued to retain the gigantic reptiles of its earlier ages, 
would be a world of horrid, exterminating war, and alto- 
gether rather a place of torment than a scene of interme. 
diate character, in which, though it sometimes reéchoes the 
groans of suffering nature, life is, in the main, enjoyment. 
And so,— save in a few exceptional cases, that, while they 
establish the rule as a fact, serve also as a key to unlock 
that principle of the Divine government on which it ap- 
pears to rest, — no sooner was the reptile removed from his 
place in the fore-front of creation, and creatures of a higher 
order introduced into the consolidating and fast-mpening 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 32) 


clanet of which he had been so long the monarch, than his 
bulk shrank and his strength lessened, and he assumed a hu- 
mility of form and aspect at once in keeping with his reduced 
circumstances, and compatible with the general welfare. But 
though the reason of the reduction appears obvious, I know 
not that it can be referred to any other cause than simply the 
will of the All-Wise Creator. 

There hangs a mystery greatly more profound over the 
fact of the degradation than over that of the reduction and 
diminution of classes. We can assign what at least seems 
to be a sufficient reason why, when reptiles formed as a class 
the highest representatives of the vertebrata, they should be 
of imposing bulk and strength, and altogether worthy of that 
post of precedence which they then occupied among the ani 
mals. We can also assign a reason for the strange reduction 
which took place among them in strength and bulk imme- 
diately on their removal from the first to the second place. 
But why not only reduction, but also degradation? Why, as 
division started up in advance of division, — first the reptiles 
in front of the fishes, then the quadrupedal mammals in front 
of the reptiles, and, last of all, man in front of the quadru- 
pedal mammals,— should the supplanted classes, — two of 
them at least, — fishes and reptiles, — for there seem to have 
been no additions made to the mammals since man entered upon 
the scene, — why should they have become the receptacles of 
orders and families of a degraded character, which had no place 
among them in their monarchical state? The fishes removed 
beyond all analogy with the higher vertebrata, by their homo- 
cercal tails, — the fishes (Acanthopterygii and Sub-brachiati) 
with their four limbs slung in a belt round their necks, — the 
Gat fishes, (Plewronectide,) that, in addition to this deformity 
are so twisted to a side, that while the one eye occupies a single 


822 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


orbit in the middle of the skull, the other is thrust out to tts 
edge, — the irregular fishes generally (sun-fishes, frog-fishes, 
hippocampi, &c.) were not introduced into the ichthyic di- 
vision until after the full development of the reptile dynasty 

nor did the hand that makes no slips in its working ‘form 
the crooked serpent,” footless, grovelling, venom-bearing, — 
the authorized type of a fallen and degraded creature, — 
until after the introduction of the mammals. What can 
this fact of degradation mean? Species and genera seem to 
be greatly more numerous in the present age of the world 
than in any of the geologic ages. Is it not possible that the 
extension of the chain of being which has thus taken place — 
not only, as we find, through the addition of the higher divis- 
ions of animals to its upper end, but also through the interpo- 
lations of lower links into the previously existing divisions — 
may have borne reference to some predetermined scheme of 
well-proportioned gradation, or, according to the poet, 


“‘Of general OrpER since the whole began >” 


May not, in short, what we term degradation be merely one 
of the modes resorted to for filling up the voids in creation, 
and thereby perfecting a scale which must have been origi- 
nally not merely a scale of narrow compass, but also of innu- 
merable breaks and blanks, hiatuses and chasms? Such, 
certainly, would be the reading of the enigma which a Soame 
Jenyns ora Bolingbroke would suggest; but the geologist has 
learned from his science, that the completion of a chain of at 
least contemporary being, perfect in its gradations, cannot 
possibly have formed the design of Providence. Almost ever 
since God united vitality to matter, the links in this chain of 
animated nature, as if composed of a material tov brittle to 
bear their own weight when stretched across the geologic _ 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 323 


ages, have been dropping one after one from his land, and 
sinking, fractured and broken, into the rocks below. It is 
urged by Pope, that were “ we to press on superior powers,” 
and rise from our own assigned place to the place immediately 
above tt, we would, in consequence of the transposition, 
“In the full creation leave a void, 
Where, one step broken, the great scale ’s destroyed. 


From nature’s chain whatever link we strike, 
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”’ 


The poet could scarce have anticipated that there was a sci- 
ence then sleeping in its cradle, and dreaming the dreams of 
Whiston, Leibnitz, and Burnet, which was one day to rise and 
demonstrate that both the tenth and the ten thousandth link 
in the chain had been already broken and laid by, with all 
the thousands of links between; and that man might lauda- 
bly ‘“‘ press on superior powers,” and attain to a “ new na- 
ture,” without in the least affecting the symmetry of creation 
by the void which his elevation would necessarily create ; 
that, in fine, voids and blanks in the scale are exceedingly 
common things; and that, if men could, by rising into an- 
gels, make one blank more, they might do so with perfect 
impunity. Further, even were the graduated chain of Boling- 
broke a reality, and not what Johnson well designates it, an 
“ absurd hypothesis,” and were what I have termed the inter- 
polation of links necessary to its completion, the mere filling 
up of the original blanks and chasms would not necessarily 
involve the fact of degradation, seeing that each blank could 
be filled up, if I may so express myself, from its lower end. 
Each could be as certainly occupied to the full by an eleva. 
tion of lower forms, as by a humiliation of the higher. We 
might receive the hypothesis of Bolingbroke, and yet 


324 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


find the mysterious fact of degradation remain an unsolved 
riddle in our hands. 

But though I can assign neither reason nor cause for the 
fact, I cannot avoid the conclusion, that it is associated witk 
certain other great facts in the moral government of the uni- 
verse, by those threads of analogical connection which run 
through the entire tissue of Creation and Providence, and 
impart to it that character of unity which speaks of the single 
producing Mind. The first idea of every religion on earth 
which has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual in- 
stincts of man’s nature, is that of a Future State ; the second 
idea is, that in this state men shall exist in two separate classes, 
— the one in advance of their present condition, the other far 
in the rear of it. It is on these two great beliefs that con- 
science every where finds the fulcrum from which it acts upon 
the conduct; and it is, we find, wholly inoperative as a force 
without them. And in that one religion among men that, 
instead of retiring, like the pale ghosts of the others, before 
tne light of civilization, brightens and expands in its beams, 
and in favor of whose claim as a revelation from God the 
highest philosophy has declared, we find these two master 
ideas occupying a still more prominent place than in any of 
those merely indigenous religions that spring up in the human 
mind of themselves. The special lesson which the Adorable 
Saviour, during his ministry on earth, oftenest enforced, and 
to which all the others bore reference, was the lesson of a 
tinal separation of mankind into two great divisions, — a divis- 
ion of God-like men, of whose high standing and full-orbed 
happiness man, in the present scene of things, can form no 
adequate conception; and a division of men finally lost, and 
doomed to unutterable misery and hopeless degradation 


% 


ON GEOLOGIC RAiSTORY. 32d 


There is not in all Revelation a single doctrine which we 
find oftener or more clearly enforced than that there shall 
continue to exist, throughout the endless cycles of the future, 
a race of degraded men and of degraded angels. 

Now, it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general 
scope, the revealed pieces on to the geologic record. We 
know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was suc- 
ceeded by that of the reptile, —that the dynasty of the rep- 
tile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped, — 
and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was suc- 
ceeded by that of man as man now exists, —a creature of 
mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alter- 
nations of enjoyment and suffering. We know, further — 
so far at least as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the 
record, — that the several dynasties were introduced, not in 
their lower, but in their higher forms ;— that, in short, in the 
imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a general! 
rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the 
magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact 
of degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile. 
And then, passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the 
dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the 
final one, but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more 
properly, re-creation, known theologically as the Resurrec- 
tion, which shall be connected in its physical components, by 
bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now 
reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, 
conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes supe- 
riority, shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of 
responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the pre- 
liminary dynasties. We are further taught, that at the com. 
mencement of this last of the dynasties, there will be a re 


28 


326 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings, — 
a re-creation of the Jost. We are taught yet further, that 
though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at 
their first introduction were placed on higher ground than 
that on which they now stand, and sank by their own act, it 
was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all 
things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and 
that Redemption is thus no after-thought, rendered necessary 
by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, 
for which provision had been made from the beginning ; so 
that the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration 
has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes 
of the Eternal, what he is designated in the remarkable text, 
“the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world.” Slain 
from the foundations of the world! Could the assertors of the 
stony science ask for language more express? By piecing 
the two records together,— that revealed in Scripture and 
that revealed in the rocks, — records which, however widely 
geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunder- 
stand the other, have emanated from the same great Author, 
— we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period suc- 
ceeded period, each in succession ushering in a higher and yet 
higher scene of existence, — that fish, reptiles, mammiferous 
quadrupeds, have reigned in turn, —that responsible man, 
‘made in the image of God,” and with dominion over all 
creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his re- 
ception ; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms ° 
the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but 
merely the last of the preliminary scenes ; and that that period 
to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their 
well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vesti- 
bule, shall have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for it 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. . 32% 


juration. I know not how it may appear to others ; but for 
m- own part, I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a 
'ack of proportion in the series of being, were the period of 
perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without 
the introduction of an intermediate creation of responsible im- 
perfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. ‘That 
scene of things in which God became Man, and suffered, 
seems, as it no doubt zs, a necessary link in the chain. 

I am aware that I stand on the confines of a mystery 
which man, since the first introduction of sin into the world 
till now, has ‘‘ vainly aspired to comprehend.” But I have 
no new reading of the enigma to offer. I know not why it 
is that moral evil exists in the universe of the All-Wise and 
the All-Powerful; nor through what occult law of Deity it 
is that “perfection should come through suffering.” The 
question, like that satellite, ever attendant upon our planet, 
which presents both its sides to the sun, but invariably the 
same side to the earth, hides one of its faces from man, and 
turns it to but the Eye from which all light emanates. And 
it is in that God-ward phase of the question that the mys- 
tery dwells. We can map and measure every protuberance 
and hollow which roughens the nether disk of the moon, as, 
during the shades of night, it looks down upon our path to 
cheer and enlighten ; but what can we know of the other? It 
would, however, seem, that even in this field of mystery the 
extent of the inexplicable and the unknown is capable of 
‘reduction, and that the human understanding is vested in an 
ability of progressing towards the central point of that dark 
field throughout alltime, mayhap all eternity, as the asymp 
tote progresses upon its curve. Even though the essence 
of the question should forever remain a mystery, it may 
yet, in its reduced and defined state, serve as a key for the 


328 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


laying of other mysteries open. ‘The philosophers are stil! 
as ignorant as ever respecting the intrinsic nature of gravi- 
tation; but regarded simply as a force, how many enigmas 
has it not served to unlock! And that moral gravitation 
towards evil, manifested by the only two classes of respon- 
sible beings of which there is aught known to man, and of 
which a degradation linked by mysterious analogy with a 
class cf facts singularly prominent in geologic history is the 
result, occupies apparently a similar place, as a force, in the 
moral dynamics of the universe, and seems suited to perform 
asimilar part. Inexplicable itself, it is yet a key to the so- 
lution of all the minor inexplicabilities in the scheme of 
Providence. 

In a matter of such extreme niceness and difficulty, shall ] 
dare venture on an illustrative example ? 

So far as both the geologic and the Scriptural evidence 
extends, no species or family of existences seems to have 
been introduced by creation into the present scene of being 
since the appearance of man. In Scripture the formation of 
the human race is described as the terminal act ofa series, 
*‘ good ” in all its previous stages, but which became “ very 
good” then; and geologists, judging from the modicum of 
evidence which they have hitherto succeeded in collecting on 
the subject, — evidence still meagre, but, so far as it goes, in- 
dependent and distinct,— pronounce ‘ post-Adamic crea- 
tions ” at least “improbable.” The naturalist finds certain 
animal and vegetable species restricted to certain circles, 
and that in certain foci in these circles they attain to their 
fullest development and their maximum number. And these 
foci he regards as the original centres of creation, whence, 
in each instance in the process of increase and multiplica 
ion, the plant or creature propagated itself outwards in cir 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 329 


culai wavelets of life, that sank at each stage as they widened 
till at length, at the circumference of the area, they wholly 
ceased. Now we find it argued by Professor Edward Forbes 
that ‘since man’s appearance, certain geological areas, both 
of land and water, have been formed, presenting such physt- 
cal conditions as to entitle us to expect within their bounds 
one, or in some instances more than one, centre of creation, 
or point of maximum of a zoological or botanical province. 
But a critical examination renders evident,” the Professor 
adds, “ that instead of showing distinct foci of creation, they 
have been in all instances peopled by colonization, 7. e. by 
migration of species from pre-existing, and in every case pre- 
Adamic, provinces Among the terrestrial areas the British 
isles may serve as an example; among marine, the Baltic, 
Mediterranean, and Black Seas. The British islands have 
been colonized from various centres of creation in (now) 
continental Europe ; the Baltic Sea from the Celtic region, 
although it runs itself into the conditions of the Boreal one ; 
and the Mediterranean, as it now appears, from the fauna and 
flora of the more ancient Lusitanian province.” Professor 
Forbes, it is stated further, in the report of his paper to which 
J owe these details, — a paper read at the Royal Institution in 
March last, —‘‘ exhibited, in support of the same view, a 
map, showing the relation which the centres of creation of the 
air-breathing molluscs in Europe bear to the geological his- 
tory of the respective areas, and proving that the whole snail 
population of its northern and central extent (the portion of 
the Continent of newest and probably post-Adamic origin) 
had been derived from foci of creation seated in pre-Adamic 
lands. And these remarkable facts have induced the Profes- 
sor,” it was added, ‘‘to maintain the improbability of post- 


Adamic creations ’ 


28 * 


530 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


Witk the introduction of man into the scene of existence 
creation, [ repeat, seems to have ceased. What is it that 
now takes its place, and performs its work? During the 
previous dynasties, all elevation in the scale was an effect 
simply of creation. Nature lay dead in a waste theatre of 
rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate laws, chemica!. 
mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelli- 
gent processes: tie creative fiat went forth; and, amid waters 
that straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vege- 
table and animal, the dynasty of the fish was introduced. 
Many ages passed, during which there took place no further 
elevation: on the contrary, in not a few of the newly intro- 
duced species of the reigning class there occurred for the first 
time examples of an asymmetrical misplacement of parts, 
and, in at least one family of fishes, instances of defect of 
parts: there was the manifestation of a downward tendency 
towards the degradation of monstrosity, when the elevatory 
fiat again went forth, and, through an act of creation, the 
dynasty of the reptile began. Again many ages passed 
by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm- 
blooded oviparous animal, the bird, and of a few marsupial 
quadrupeds, but in which the prevailing class reigned un- 
deposed, though at least unelevated. Yet again, however, 
the elevatory fiat went forth, and through an act of creation 
the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And after 
the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth ye 
once more in an act of creation ; and with the human, heaven- 
aspiring dynasty, the moral government of God, in its con- 
nection w'th at least the world which we inhabit, “ took be- 
ginning.” And then creation ceased. Why? Simply be: 
cause Grod’s moral government had begun, — because in ne- 
cessary conformity with the institution of that government, there 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 30) 


was tc be a thorough identity maintained between the glori- 
fied and immortal beings of the terminal dynasty, and the 
dying magnates of the dynasty which now is; and because, 
In consequence of the maintenance of this identity as an 
essential condition of this moral government, mere acts of 
creation could no longer carry on the elevatory process. 
The work analogous in its end and object to those acts 
of creation which gave to our planet its successive dynas- 
ties of higher and yet higher existences, is the work of 
Repemption. It is the elevatory process of the present time, 
—the only possible provision for that final act of re-crea- 
tion ‘“‘ to everlasting life,” which shall usher in the terminal 
dynasty. 

1 cannot avoid thinking that many of our theologians 
attach a too narrow meaning to the remarkable reason “ an- 
nexed to the Fourth Commandment” by the Divine Law- 
giver. ‘God rested on the seventh day,” says the text, 
from all his work which He had created and made; and 
God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” And such 
ts the reason given in the Decalogue why man should also 
rest on the seventh day. God rested on the Sabbath, and 
sanctified it; and therefore man ought also to rest on the 
Sabbath, and keep it holy. But I know not where we shall 
find grounds for the belief that that Sabbath-day during 
which God rested was merely commensurate in its duration 
with one of the Sabbaths of short-lived man, —a brief period, 
measured by a single revolution of the earth on its axis. We 
have not. as has been shown, a shadow of evidence that He 
resumed his work of creation on the morrow: the geologist 
finds no trace of post-Adamic creation, — the theologian can 
tell us of none. God’s Sabbath of rest may still exist ; — the 
work of RepemPTion may be the work of his Sabbath day. That 


3352 BEARING OF FINAL CAUSES 


elevatory process through successive acts of creation which 
engaged Him during myriads of ages, was of an ordinary 
week-day character; but when the term of his moral gov- 
ernment began, the elevatory process proper to it assumed 
the Divine character of the Sabbath. This special view ap- 
pears to lend peculiar emphasis to the reason embodied in 
the commandment. The collation of the passage with the 
geologic record seems, as if by a species of re-translation, to 
make it enunciate as its injunction, “ Keep this day, not 
merely as a day of memorial related to a past fact, but also 
as a day of cooperation with God in the work of elevation in 
relation both. to a present fact and a future purpose. God 
keeps his Sabbath,” it says, “in order that He may save ; 
keep yours also, in order that ye may be saved.” It serves, 
besides, to throw light on the prominence of the Sabbatical 
command, in a digest of law of which no part or tittle can 
pass away until the fulfilment of all things. During the pres- 
ent dynasty of probation and trial, that special work of both 
God and man on which the character of the future dynasty 
depends, is the Sabbath-day work of saving and being 


saved.* 





* The common objection to that special view which regards the 
days of creation as immensely protracted periods of time, furnishes a 
specimen, if not of reasoning in a circle, at least of reasoning from a 
mere assumption. It first takes for granted, that the Sabbath day 
during which God rested was a day of but twenty-four hours; and 
then argues, from the supposition, that in order to keep up the propor 
tion between the six previous working days and the seventh day ot 
rest, which the reason annexed to the fourth commandment demands, 
these previous lays must also have been days of twenty-four hours 
each. It would, I have begun to suspect, square better with the 
ascertained facts, and be at least equally in accordance with Scripture, 
to reverse the process, and argue that, because God’s working days 


ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 333 


It is in this dynasty of the future that man’s moral and 
intellectual faculties will receive their full development. 
The expectation of any very great advance in the present 





were immensely protracted periods, hrs Sabbath must also be an im- 
mensely protracted period. The reason attached to the law of the 
Sabbath seems to be simply a reason of proportion ; — the objection to 
which I refer is an objection palpably founded on considerations of 
proportion. And certainly, were the reason to be divested of pro- 
portion, it would be divested also of its distinctive character as a 
reason. Were it to run as follows, it could not be at all understood : 
— “Six days shalt thou labor, &c., but on the seventh day shalt thou 
do no labor, &c.; for in six immensely protracted periods of many 
thousand years each did the Lord make the heavens and earth, &c., 
and then rested during a brief day of twenty-four hours; therefore 
the Lord blessed the brief day of twenty-four hours, and hallowed 
it.” This, I repeat, would not be reason. All, however, that seems 
necessary to the integrity of the reason, in its character as such, is, 
that the proportion of six parts to seven should be maintained. God’s 
periods may be periods expressed algebraically by letters symbolical 
of unknown quantity, and man’s periods by letters symbolical of 
quantities well known; but if God’s Sabbath be equal to one of his 
six working days, and man’s Sabbath equal to one of his six working 
days, the integrity of proportion is maintained. Wher I see the pal- 
pable absurdity of such a reading of the reason as the one given 
above, I can see no absurdity whatever in the reading which I sub- 
join : — “Six periods (a=a=a=a=a=a) shalt thou labor, &c., but on 
the seventh period (6=a) shalt thou do no labor, &c.; for in six veri- 
ods (x==r1—=x—=r==r—x) the Lord made heaven and earth, &c., and 
rested the seventh period, (y= ;) therefore the Lord blessed the 
seventh period, and hallowed it.” The reason, in its character as a 
reason of proportion, survives here in all its integrity. Man, when in 
his unfallen estate, bore the image of God, but it must have been a 
miniature image at best; — the proportion of man’s weck to that of 
his Maker may, for aught that appears, be mathematically just in its 
proportions, and yet be a miniature image too, —the mere scale of a 
map, on which inches represent geographical degrees. All those 
week days and Sabbath days of man which have come and gone since 


334 CONCLUSION. 


acene of things — great, at least, when measured by man’s 
large capacity of conceiving of the good and fair—seems 
to be, like all human hope when restricted to time, an expec- 
tation doomed to disappointment. There are certain limits 
within which the race improves ;— civilization is better than 
the want of it, and the taught superior to the untaught man. 
There is a change, too, effected in the moral nature, through 
that Spirit which, by working belief in the heart, brings its 
aspirations into harmony with the realities of the unseen world, 
tha:, in at least its relation to the future state, cannot be esti- 
mated too highly. But conception can travel very far beyond 
even its best effects in their merely secular bearing; nay, it 
s peculiarly its nature to show the men most truly the sub- 
jects of it, how miserably they fall short of the high standard 
of conduct and feeling which it erects, and to teach them. 
more emphatically than by words, that their degree of happi- 
ness must of necessity be as low as their moral attainments 
are humble. Further, — man, though he has been increasing 
in knowledge ever since his appearance on earth, has not 
been improving in faculty ; a shrewd fact, which they who 
expect most from the future of this world would do well to 
consider. The ancient masters of mind were in no respect 
inferior in calibre to their predecessors. We have not yet 
shot ahead of the old Greeks in either the perception of the 
beautiful, or in the ability of producing it; there has been no 
improvement in the inventive faculty since the Iliad was 
written, some three thousand years ago; nor has taste become 


man first entered upon this scene of being, with all which shall yet 
come and go, until the resurrection of the dead terminates the work 
of Redemption, may be included, and probably are included, in the 
one Sabbath day of God. . 


CONCLUSION. 305 


more exquisite, or the perception of the harmony of numbers 
more nice, since the age of the Aineid. Science is cumn- 
lative in its character; and so its votaries in modern times 
stand on a higher pedestal than their predecessors. But 
though nature produced a Newton some two centuries ago, 
as she produced a Goliath of Gath at an earlier period, the 
modern philosophers, as a class, do not exceed in actval stat- 
ure the worse informed ancients, — the Euclids, Archimedeses, 
and Aristotles. We would be without excuse if, with the Ba- 
con, Milton, and Shakspeare of these latter ages of the world 
full before us, we recurred to the obsolete belief that the hu- 
man race is deteriorating ; but then, on the other hand, we 
have certain evidence, that since genius first began uncon- 
sciously to register in its works its own bulk and proportions, 
there has been no increase in the mass or improvement in the 
quality of individual mind. As for the dream that there is to 
be some extraordinary elevation of the general platform of 
the race achieved by means of education, it is simply the 
hallucination of the age,— the world’s present alchemical 
expedient for converting farthings into guineas, sheerly by 
dint of scouring. Not but that education is good ; it exercises, 
and, in the ordinary mind, developes, faculty. But it will not 
anticipate the terminal dynasty. Yet further, — man’s aver- 
age capacity of happiness seems to be as limited and as inca- 
pable of increase as his average reach of intellect: it is a 
mediocre capacity at best; nor is it greater by a shade now, 
in these days of power-looms and portable manures, than in 
the times of the old patriarchs. So long, too, as the law of 
increase continues, man must be subject to the law of death, 
with its stern attendants, suffering and sorrow ; for the two 
laws go necessarily together; and so long as death reigns, 
human creatures, in even the best of times, will continue to 


336 CONCLUSION. 


quit this scene of being without professing much satisfaction 
at what they have found either in it or themselves. It will no 
doubt be a less miserable world than it is now, when the good 
come, as there is reason to hope they one day shall, to be a 
majority ; but it will be felt to be an inferior sort of world 
even then, and be even fuller than now of wishes and long- 
ings for a better. Let it improve as it may, it will be a scene 
of probation and trial till the end. And so Faith, undeceived 
by the mirage of the midway desert, whatever form or name, — 
political or religious, the phantasmagoria may bear, must con- 
tinue to look beyond its unsolid and tremulous glitter, —its 
bare rocks exaggerated by the vapor into air-drawn castles, and 
its stunted bushes magnified into goodly trees, — and, fixing 
her gaze upon the re-creation yet future, — the terminal dy- 
nasty yet unbegun, —she must be content to enter upon her 
final rest—for she will not enter upon it earlier —‘“ at 
return ” 
“Of Him, the Woman’s Seed, 

Last in the clouds, from heaven to be revealed 

In glory of the Father, to dissolve 

Satan with his perverted world, then raise 

From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, 

New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date, 

Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love, 

To bring forth fruits, — joy and eternal bliss.” 

But it may be judged that I am trespassing on a field into 
which I have no right to enter. Save, however, for its close 
proximity with that in which the geologist expatiates as prop- 
erly his own, this little volume would never have been writ- 
ten. Itis the fact that man must believingly codperate with 
God in the work of preparation for the final dynasty, or exist 
throughout its never-ending cycles as a lost and degraded 
creature, that alone renders the development hypothesis 


CONCLUSION. aa? 


formidable. But inculcating that the elevatory process is one 
of the natural law, not of moral endeavor, — by teaching, in- 
ferentially at least, that in the better state of things which is 
coring there is to be an identity of race with that of the ex 
isting dynasty, but no identity of individual consciousness, 
— that, on the contrary, the life after death which we are te 
inherit is to be merely a horrid life of wriggling impurities, 
originated in the putrefactive mucus, — and that thus the men 
who now live possess no real stake in the kingdom of the 
future, — it is its direct tendency, so far as its influence ex- 
tends, to render the required codperation with God an impos- 
sibility. For that cooperation cannot exist without belief as 
its basis. ‘The hypothesis involves a misreading of the geologic 
record, which not merely affects its meaning in relation to 
the mind, and thus, in a question of science, substitutes error 
for truth, but which also threatens to affect the record itself. 
‘n relation to the destiny of every individual perverted and 
led astray. It threatens to write down among the degraded 
and the lost, men who, under the influence of an unshaken 
faith, might have risen at the dawn of the terminal period, to 
enjoy the fulness of eternity among the glorified and the 


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